Robin | zevenseas | SharePoint Blog

IGNITE recap

Robin Meure — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:56:21 GMT

After a pretty exhausting but very interesting week I can say that SharePoint 2010 will be very.. awesome.. (that was pretty much THE word of the week by a particular trainer and a few attendees (amongst them were SharePoint heroes like Tobias Zimmergren, Waldek Mastykarz, Joris Poelmans (AKA JOPX)))

After seeing a lot of sessions in Vegas at the SPC09, I thought that I had seen all the cool new things that are coming but this week showed a couple more.

One of the biggest new things for me was the removal of .stp files and instead of those, now we have .wsp’s that are called “WebTemplates”. Because they are .wsp’s, we can make use of the upgrade functionality. Meaning that in 2010 we have UPGRADEABLE webtemplates!!

Once more..

in 2010 we have UPGRADEABLE webtemplates!!!

To give you the bigger picture ..

User can click together the layout..
User can save the site as template
Developer can import the WSP into VS
Developer can upload the WSP as a farm solution
Sites can be created based on that custom webtemplate
1. Developer modifies the webtemplate according to new business needs
2. Developer updated WSP
3. WSP get’s upgraded
4. Existing sites get updated using the Feature Update framework

(at least.. that’s the story ;))

Can’t believe they didn’t shout this one out as big as the ‘F5 experience’ for example. I mean.. businesses were (and are) waiting for many years to have this functionality available..

For now I just wanted to say.. thanks Microsoft for making this possible, thanks Wouter van Vugt, Vesa Juvonen and Todd Carter for giving an awesome developer training and thanks Dan for giving me his seat ;)

Quick update! ;)

Robin Meure — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:02:29 GMT

Yesterday was the last day of a big project.. was a good one where I’ve build something amazing stuff but now it’s time for something else..

There seems to be time left the coming weeks to pick up some smaller projects (or stuff for TunnelPoint/ProduShare/Blog Central) but it could be nice to pickup some other stuff that is available and if anyone has an interesting project lying around (and wants me in the team) please don't hesitate to contact me on robin at zevenseas.com or send an email to hans at zevenseas.com.

On another note.. Vegas is coming up! Will be very good with all the SharePoint peeps around.. after Seattle and London I’m really looking forward to this conference! One big happy family :)

Building a custom Nintex Workflow Activity : using the SitePicker

Robin Meure — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:44:18 GMT

Yes yes.. another post on how to re-use the webcontrols of Nintex in your own custom workflow activity.. this time it’s the SitePicker. Which looks like this:

This picker thing took me the longest time to get working since it requires (which I’m not really sure of.. just was glad that I have it working :)) a LOT of javascript. First I added this chunk of javascript for the initialization of the picker:

var curSelObjID = "";
var curSelObjIOrigDBColor = "";
var webUrl = "";
var webID = "";
var folderID = "";
var folderUrl = "";
var siteID = "";
var isFormLib = false;
function SitePickerHandleOnClick(anchorid, type, url, webid, siteid, folderid) {
    var anchorItem = document.getElementById(anchorid);
    if (anchorItem != null) {
        if (curSelObjID != "") {
            var curAnchorItem = document.getElementById(curSelObjID);
            curAnchorItem.style.backgroundColor = curSelObjIOrigDBColor
        }
        curSelObjID = anchorid;
        curSelObjIOrigDBColor = anchorItem.style.backgroundColor;
        webUrl = url;
        webID = webid;
        siteID = siteid;
        folderID = folderid;
        //anchorItem.style.backgroundColor = "#EB501C"; // dark Nintex color
        anchorItem.style.backgroundColor = "#F39B23"; // light Nintex color
    }
}
function SitePickerNeedToExpandHandler(url, webid, siteid, folderid) {
    if (webUrl == "" && webID.length > 0) {
        webUrl = SitePickerGetWebURLFromGUID(siteID, webID);
        //webUrl = WebIDUrl(webID);
    }
    if (folderUrl == "" && folderID.length) {
        folderUrl = SitePickerGetFileURLFromGUID(siteID, webID, folderID);
    }
    if ((webUrl.substring(0, url.length) == url) || (folderUrl.substring(0, url.length) == url))
        return true;
    return false;
}
function SitePickerPostInit() {
    if (curSelObjID != "") {
        var selObj = document.getElementById(curSelObjID);
        if (selObj != null) {
            //selObj.parentElement.focus();
            //selObj.focus();
        }
    }
}
function GetSitePickerListBGColorHandler(anchorid, url, webid, siteid, folderid) {
    if (webUrl == "" && webID.length > 0) {
        webUrl = SitePickerGetWebURLFromGUID(siteID, webID);
        //webUrl = WebIDUrl(webID);
    }
    if (folderUrl == "") {
        if (siteID != "" && webID != "" && folderID != "")
            folderUrl = SitePickerGetFileURLFromGUID(siteID, webID, folderID);
    }
    if (url == folderUrl) {
        curSelObjID = anchorid;
        curSelObjIOrigDBColor = ""; // default color
        return "#F39B23";
    }
    else
        return "#000000";
}
function GetSitePickerWebBGColorHandler(anchorid, url, webid, siteid, folderid) {
    if (webUrl == "" && webID.length > 0) {
        webUrl = SitePickerGetWebURLFromGUID(siteID, webID);
        //webUrl = WebIDUrl(webID);
    }
    if (url == webUrl && folderID == folderid) {
        curSelObjID = anchorid;
        curSelObjIOrigDBColor = ""; // default color
        return "#F39B23";
    }
    else
        return "#000000";
}

Then to get the value of the sitepicker, this bit of javascript has to be inserted into the TPARetrieveConfig method:

function TPARetrieveConfig() {
    SetFilter(true, true, true, true);
    SetAllowSelectWebs(false);
    DoInternalOnLoad('SitePicker', webUrl, webUrl + "/_vti_bin/NintexWorkflow/Workflow.asmx", true);
    webID = configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='WebId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text;
    folderID = configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='FolderId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text;
    siteID = configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='SiteId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text;
    if (configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Url']") && configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Url']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text != "") {
        translateTextAndInsertIntoRefTextField(parentUrl, configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Url']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text);
        document.getElementById(rdoEnterUrl).checked = true;
        document.getElementById(rdoChooseSite).checked = false;
        document.getElementById("SitePicker").style.display = "none";
        document.getElementById("enterUrl").style.display = "block";
    }
    else {
        document.getElementById(rdoEnterUrl).checked = false;
        document.getElementById(rdoChooseSite).checked = true;
        document.getElementById("SitePicker").style.display = "block";
        document.getElementById("enterUrl").style.display = "none";
 
    }
 
    SetFilter(true, true, true, true);
    SetAllowSelectWebs(false);
    DoInternalOnLoad('SitePicker', webUrl, webUrl + "/_vti_bin/NintexWorkflow/Workflow.asmx", true);
}

Then to write the values back, this bit of javascript is being used in the TPAWriteConfig method:

function TPAWriteConfig() {
    configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='WebId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = self.webID;
    configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='FolderId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = self.folderID;
    configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='SiteId']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = self.siteID;
    EnsurePrimitiveValueNode(configXml, "Url");
    if (document.getElementById(rdoEnterUrl).checked) {
        configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Url']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = getStringFromRefTextField(parentUrl);
    }
    else {
        configXml.selectSingleNode("//Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Url']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = "";
    }
    
    return true;
}

And to make sure the SitePicker is loaded, this bit has to be referenced:

<script src="/_layouts/NintexWorkflow/SitePicker.js?Version=<%=Nintex.Workflow.Licensing.License.VersionInfo %>" type="text/javascript" language="javascript"></script>

You can see in the variables there are two ways to store the selected List (or web/site/folder) namely:

Option 1:

ListUrl

Option 2:

SiteId
WebId
FolderId

In the codebehind we can use the following piece of code to get to the desired selected location:

Guid SiteGuid = this.SiteId;
Guid WebGuid = this.WebId;
Guid ListGuid = this.FolderId;
                
if (this.SiteId == Guid.Empty && (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.Url)))
{
    Utility.GetIdsFromSharePointUrl(this.Url, out SiteGuid, out WebGuid, out ListGuid);
}

So it doesn’t matter what path is chosen, in both ways we get all the GUID’s we want to navigate to the desired location by making use of the Utility Class that is supplied with the Nintex.Workflow.dll ;)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Nintex,Workflow

Building a custom Nintex Workflow Activity : using the CredentialPicker

Robin Meure — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:04:04 GMT

In my previous post I mentioned that I also wanted to use the CredentialPicker from Nintex to include in my own custom activity and since of this week I finally managed to achieve this! ;)

What is the CredentialPicker? This picker allows you to set an username and password combination so that an activity can be ran using those credentials. But you can also use a lookup to a workflow constant credential that can be defined on web / site / web application level. So it’s like the SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPriviliges method but then in a workflow activity. So I think you can see the potential of this control.. In an activity it looks like this :

Doesn’t look that spectacular eh? But.. it’s very powerful.. very..

So how do we get this awesome little control in our dialog page?

Add the UserControl declarative in the header of the page

<%@ Register TagPrefix="Nintex" TagName="CredentialControl" Src="~/_layouts/NintexWorkflow/CredentialControl.ascx" %>

Add the javascript code to retrieve the current set values using the TPARetrieveConfig method

function TPARetrieveConfig() {           
    if (configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Username']") && configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Password']")) {
        cc_setUsername("<%= credentialPicker.ClientID %>", configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Username']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text);
        cc_setPassword("<%= credentialPicker.ClientID %>", configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Password']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text);
    }
}

Add the javacsript to write the current value set using the TPAWriteConfig method

function TPAWriteConfig() {          
    EnsurePrimitiveValueNode(configXml, "Username");
    EnsurePrimitiveValueNode(configXml, "Password");
    configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Username']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = cc_getUsername("<%= credentialPicker.ClientID %>");
    configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='Password']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = cc_getPassword("<%= credentialPicker.ClientID %>");
    return true;
}

And then we add the UserControl in the ContentPlaceHolder

 <Nintex:CredentialControl RequiredField="true" DisplayMode="dialog" CssClass="ms-input"
        Width="170px" runat="server" id="credentialPicker">
    </Nintex:CredentialControl>

To get the credentials in codebehind in the CodeActivity use this

string runtimeUsername = string.Empty;
string runtimePassword = string.Empty;
CredentialValue.DetermineRuntimeCredentials(
this.Username, //UserName Property
this.Password,  //Password Property
out runtimeUsername, 
out runtimePassword, 
ctx.Web.ID, 
ctx.Web.Site.ID);
NetworkCredential credentials = null;
if (runtimeUsername.Contains(@"\"))
{
   string[] strArray = 
        runtimeUsername.Split(new char[] { '\\' });
   credentials = 
        new NetworkCredential(strArray[1], runtimePassword, strArray[0]);
}
else
{
   credentials = new NetworkCredential(runtimeUsername, runtimePassword);
}

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Nintex,Workflow

Building a custom Nintex Workflow Activity

Robin Meure — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:47:22 GMT

In the past I’ve created custom workflow activities for SPD (SPD Workflow activity - Copying a listItem accros a site & SPD Workflow activity - Creating a document library) and now the time came to develop some activities for Nintex Workflow! Basically it’s just the same as building a activity for SPD only with Nintex you also need to include some other things like

UI page, so that users can configure your activity.
GenericRenderingAdapter, this sits between the UI page and the Activity itself.

To get all the details about this I can recommend to download the Nintex SDK and find out for yourself how this all works. This post is about what I couldn’t find in the SDK ;)

The activity will set an alert to a specific list for a specific user. So to do this I need two controls, a dropdown that holds all the lists from the current web and a PeoplePicker.

Dropdown <asp:DropDownList ID="uxLists" runat="server” />
PeoplePicker <Nintex:UserChooserWebControl id="uxUser" multiselect="false" SelectionSet="User" AllowExternalEmailAddresses="False" runat="server" />

The first thing to keep in mind, is the getting and setting of the properties of your activity is done using javascript. In general, every Nintex page has the following two javascript functions where you get and set the values of the controls on the page : “TPARetrieveConfig” and “TPAWriteConfig” .

Here is how the “TPARetrieveConfig” looks like:

function TPARetrieveConfig() {
    //Get the selected item from the Config Store
    var listNameOrId = configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='ListGuid']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text;
    
    //Get a reference to the DropDownList
    var uxLists = document.getElementById("<%= uxLists.ClientID %>");
    
    //Set the DropDownList 'selected' item to the stored value
    uxLists.value = listNameOrId;
    if (uxLists.selectedIndex == -1) {
        // its a newer action where the title instead of the id is stored
        for (var x = 0; x < uxLists.options.length; x++) {
            if (uxLists.options[x].text == listNameOrId) {
                uxLists.selectedIndex = x;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    
    //Defining a new function to retrieve the stored value and setting the PeoplePicker
    var getUsers = function() {
        if (configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='PrimaryUser']/PrimitiveValue/@Value") != null) {
            setPeopleEditorDisplayText("<%= uxUser.ClientID %>", 
            configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='PrimaryUser']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text);
        }
    }
    
    //This bit is very important, if you don't do this the value of the control will be empty
    window.attachEvent("onload", getUsers);
}

And here is how the “TPAWriteConfig” looks like :

function TPAWriteConfig() {
    
    //Setting the ConfigStore with the selectedItem of the DropDownList
    configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='ListGuid']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = document.getElementById("<%= uxLists.ClientID %>").value;
    //Setting the ConfigStore with the selected and validated user
    EnsurePrimitiveValueNode(configXml, "PrimaryUser");
    peopleEditorCheckNames("<%=uxUser.ClientID %>")
    configXml.selectSingleNode("/NWActionConfig/Parameters/Parameter[@Name='PrimaryUser']/PrimitiveValue/@Value").text = getUsersFromPeopleEditor("<%=uxUser.ClientID %>");
    return true;
}

With this markup it will be rendered as if it was a out-of-the-box Nintex Activity ;)

<asp:Content ID="ContentBody" ContentPlaceHolderID="NintexPropertyPlaceHolder" runat="Server">
     <div class="RowBlue">
        <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
            <tr>
                <td valign="top">
                    <span class="label req">
                        Select List
                    </span>
                </td>
                <td valign="top" class="inputWidth" style="width: 340px;">
                    <asp:DropDownList ID="uxLists" runat="server"/>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </div>
    <div class="RowBlue">
        <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
            <tr>
                <td valign="top">
                    <span class="label req">
                        Primary Owner
                    </span>
                </td>
                <td valign="top" class="inputWidth" style="width: 340px;">
                	<Nintex:UserChooserWebControl 
                	    id="uxUser" 
                	    multiselect="false" 
                	    SelectionSet="User" 
                	    AllowExternalEmailAddresses="False"                  	    
                	    runat="server"/>                	             
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </div>    
</asp:Content>

That’s it.. and for me, to get and set the values of the controls on the dialog page actually was the hardest part.

I’m currently investigating how to re-use the CredentialControl to create activities that can be used with ‘elevated’ permissions, that would be nice eh? ;)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Nintex,Workflow

Little blackbox called WebConfigModifications

Robin Meure — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:00:20 GMT

Some things in SharePoint are pretty hard to gain insight on, especially while doing support, and in my opinion the WebConfigModifications is really one of them.

Why? Well.. if something is not right in there it could crash your WebApplication and there is not much you (as an admin) can do about it right?

Even we as developers have a hard time of getting this right. So that’s why I’ve developed YAAP (Yet Another Application Page) that displays per WebApplication what all the WebConfigModifications are and the best thing is.. you can delete a modification as well (bet you didn’t see that one coming ;) !

Here’s how it looks like :

And here’s the code

public class Settings : ApplicationsManagementPage
{
    protected SPGridView gridView;
    protected WebApplicationSelector webApplicationSelector;
    protected override void CreateChildControls()
    {
        if (webApplicationSelector != null)
        {
            SPWebApplication webApplication = webApplicationSelector.CurrentItem;
            gridView.DataSource = GetAllWebConfigModifications();
            gridView.DataBind();
        }            
        base.CreateChildControls();
    }
           
    public void DeleteLink(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        foreach (string modificationid in RetrieveIDs())
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(modificationid))
            {
                DeleteModification(int.Parse(modificationid));
            }
        }
    }
    private string[] RetrieveIDs()
    {
        string[] modificationIds = null;
        if (((base.Request != null) && (base.Request["ctl00$PlaceHolderMain$HiddenSiteSelections"] != null)) 
              && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(base.Request["ctl00$PlaceHolderMain$HiddenSiteSelections"]))
        {
            modificationIds = 
         base.Request["ctl00$PlaceHolderMain$HiddenSiteSelections"].ToString().Split(new Char[] { '#' });
        }
        return modificationIds;
    }
    private DataTable GetAllWebConfigModifications()
    {
        //I make use of a DataTable to add an indexer to each SPWebConfigModification object, 
        //by making use of an indexer I make sure that whenever there are multiple entries that 
        //are the same I remove the right one
        DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Id");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Name");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Path");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Owner");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Sequence");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Type");
        dataTable.Columns.Add("Value");
        int webConfigModificationId = 1;
        foreach (SPWebConfigModification modification in webApplicationSelector.CurrentItem.WebConfigModifications)
        {                
            DataRow row = dataTable.NewRow();
            row["Id"] = webConfigModificationId.ToString();
            row["Name"] = modification.Name;
            row["Path"] = modification.Path;
            row["Owner"] = modification.Owner;
            row["Sequence"] = modification.Sequence;
            row["Type"] = modification.Type;
            row["Value"] = modification.Value;
            dataTable.Rows.Add(row);
            
            webConfigModificationId++;
        }
        return dataTable;
    }
    private void DeleteModification(int modificationId)
    {
        DataTable modifications = GetAllWebConfigModifications();
        
        SPWebApplication webApplication = webApplicationSelector.CurrentItem;
        webApplication.WebConfigModifications.RemoveAt(modificationId);
        webApplication.Update();
        webApplication.Farm.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>().ApplyWebConfigModifications(); 
    }

And that’s it! Hopefully this will help someone out ;)

Will put the solution up on CodePlex this week so you can download it and see for yourself what all the modifications are in for your WebApplications!

zsThemes explained!

Robin Meure — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:20:09 GMT

This post is about how the solution as described in a previous post called Adding Themes the supported way! actually works.

First of all, I wanted to get themes per WebApplication. To achieve this, I created three extension methods for the SPWebApplication class that do the following:

GetDefaultThemes, this method retrieves all the Themes that are defined in the SPThemes.xml

public static DataView GetDefault()
{
    string filePath = String.Format("{0}\\LAYOUTS\\1033\\SPThemes.xml", SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath("TEMPLATE"));
    SPThemes spThemes = new SPThemes();
    spThemes.DataSetName = "SPThemes";
    spThemes.Locale = new CultureInfo("en-US");
    spThemes.Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";
    spThemes.ReadXml(filePath);
    DataView view = new DataView(spThemes.Tables[0]);
    view.Sort = "DisplayName";
    return view;
}

GetCustomThemes, this method retrieves all the custom themes

public static DataView GetCustom(SPWebApplication webApplication)
{
    List<string> filePaths = new List<string>();
    filePaths = GetOtherXmlDefinitions(webApplication);
    DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
    dataTable = ProcessOtherXmlDefinitions(filePaths);
    return new DataView(dataTable);
}
private static List<string> GetOtherXmlDefinitions(SPWebApplication webApplication)
{
    List<string> filePaths = new List<string>();
                
    ThemesXmlFileLocations themeFileLocations = webApplication.GetChild<ThemesXmlFileLocations>("ThemesXmlFileLocations");
    if (themeFileLocations != null)
    {                
        filePaths = themeFileLocations.FilePaths;
    }
    return filePaths;
}
private static DataTable ProcessOtherXmlDefinitions(List<string> filePaths)
{
    DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
    
    foreach (string filePath in filePaths)
    {
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(filePath))
        {
            string customFilePath = SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(filePath);
            
            SPThemes spThemes = new SPThemes();
            spThemes.DataSetName = "SPThemes";
            spThemes.Locale = new CultureInfo("en-US");
            spThemes.Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";
            spThemes.ReadXml(customFilePath);
            dataTable = spThemes.Tables[0].Clone();
            foreach (DataRow row in spThemes.Tables[0].Rows)
            {
                DataRow customThemeRow = dataTable.NewRow();
                customThemeRow.ItemArray = row.ItemArray;
                dataTable.Rows.Add(customThemeRow);
            }
        }
    }
    
    return dataTable;
}

GetAllThemes, as the name suggests, this method gets all the Themes and merges the above.

Secondly I needed to add custom themes without touching the SPThemes.xml file. As you may have noticed I make use of a custom persistent object called “ThemeXmlFileLocations”. This object only has one field which is a generic list of strings. This list holds all the filelocations which are added. So with each filelocation, I look in the custom .xml file and add the custom themes to the datatable as you can see in the “ProcessOtherXmlDefinitions” method above. This is, basically, the trick to add themes without touching the core SPThemes.xml file. So here below is the persistence class:

public class ThemesXmlFileLocations : SPPersistedObject
{
    [Persisted]
    public List<string> FilePaths;
    public ThemesXmlFileLocations() { }
    public ThemesXmlFileLocations(string name, SPPersistedObject parent, Guid id) : base(name, parent, id) { }
}

I don’t it’s really necessary to put the code up here to show you how you can add a filelocation string to the list of the class eh? :)

Thirdly I needed to create a custom ThemeSelection page so all the other themes are also presented to the user. To do that, I copied the out-of-the-box page and in the codebehind put some more logic to

a) Get all the themes that are installed in the current WebApplication by making use of my extension methods

DataTable allThemesTable = 
SPContext.Current.Site.WebApplication.GetAllThemes().ToTable();

b) Filter the themes if they are blocked by an administrator

I also want to note and be clear about is that adding themes this way and choosing them only works by making use of a custom application page that replaces the out-of-the-box themeselection page. Meaning that users can still navigate to the out-of-the-box one and miss out on the custom and/or blocked themes.

So I hope the code makes more sense.. as said before, the code is available CodePlex for you to check out! ;)

Using the PageViewerWebPart to show a list or document library as a ListViewWebPart

Robin Meure — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:48:22 GMT

@brianreeves was wondering how my buddy Baris had used a PageViewer WebPart to display a List/DocumentLibrary like a ListViewWebPart in his Automatically resizing Sharepoint Page Viewer Web Part to its content post. The idea behind this solution was to show a list or document library from a collaboration environment on a publishing environment.

So by giving the Url of a view of a list/documentlibrary the PageViewerWP displays the contents of that view. But when giving the Url you only want to see the contents as a ListViewWebPart and not the complete page right?

To achieve this I created a solution that does the following :

Added custom action to lists and document libraries that makes a copy of a selected View

private Guid CreatePublishingView(SPWeb web, Guid listGuid, Guid viewGuid)
{            
    SPList list = web.Lists[listGuid];
    SPView originalView = list.Views[viewGuid];
    SPView publishingView = originalView.Clone("Publishing" + originalView.Title, originalView.RowLimit, originalView.Paged, false);                     
    publishingView.Update();
    list.Update();
    return publishingView.ID;
}

While making the copy, I open up the .aspx page that is created and replace the referenced masterpage

private void EditViewPage(SPWeb web, Guid listGuid, Guid publishingViewGuid)
{
    //Get a reference to the list and the choosen view
    SPList list = web.Lists[listGuid];            
    SPView publishingView = list.Views[publishingViewGuid];
    //Get a reference to the actual .aspx page of the view
    SPFile file = web.GetFile(publishingView.ServerRelativeUrl);
    //Opening the .aspx
    System.IO.StreamReader streamReader = new System.IO.StreamReader(file.OpenBinaryStream());
    string fileInStream = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
    streamReader.Close();
    //doing a string replacement of the masterpage
    string oldMasterPage = "MasterPageFile=\"~masterurl/default.master\"";
    string newMasterPage = "MasterPageFile=\"~site/empty.master\"";
    //saving the .aspx back to the file object and perform an update
    fileInStream = fileInStream.Replace(oldMasterPage, newMasterPage);
    ASCIIEncoding asciiEncoder = new ASCIIEncoding();
    file.SaveBinary(asciiEncoder.GetBytes(fileInStream));
    file.Update();
}

Copying the empty.master file to the Web where the List or Document Library is at

private void AddPageToFormLibrary(SPWeb web, Guid listGuid, SPFolder folder, string fileName)
{
    try
    {
        //Getting the folder where the custom .browser file is
        string filePath = String.Format("{0}\\FEATURES\\{1}\\{2}", SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath("Template"), featureName, fileName);
        FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(filePath);
        byte[] byt = new byte[Convert.ToInt32(fi.Length)];
        FileStream strm = fi.OpenRead();
        strm.Read(byt, 0, Convert.ToInt32(fi.Length));
        strm.Close();
        folder.Files.Add(fi.Name, byt, true);
    }
    catch (Exception error)
    {
        SPUtility.TransferToErrorPage("Adding Page to Library failed due to :" + error.Message.ToString());
    }
}

And that’s it! Now we have a View that looks like a ListViewWebPart so we only have copy the Url of this view and use it in a PageViewerWebPart and we’re done! So the beauty of this is the user is able to modify the view just as a .. a view.. ;)

I hope this makes sense and I have to admit that it looks a bit hacky.. Let me know if you want to see how the empty.master looks like!

Troubleshooting : An unexpected error occurred while connecting to the report server. Verify that the report server is available and configured for SharePoint integrated mode.

Robin Meure — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:33:00 GMT

At a customer we were faced with this error and very quickly we found out it was only certain WFE’s which were causing the issue. So given the following scenario

Server A : WFE
Server B : WFE
Server C : WFE + Index + Central Admin

It was working like a charm when were accessing the SharePoint environment using Server C (by manually editing the host file of our client desktop) and it failed to work if we pointed to Server A and Server B. That was quite weird.. it seemed, while looking at the error, that the WFE’s couldn’t connect to the ReportServer. So while logged on remotely on Server A and Server B, the ReportServer was working and was accessible through each WFE.

Then we thought.. wait a minute.. what’s so different between Server A & B and Server C? Well.. it’s also the Index server, meaning that SharePoint modifies the host file of the Index server so it can crawl locally. So we tried browsing, while logged on Server A and B remotely, to the SharePoint sites and we got 404’s. So it looked like that locally, SharePoint wasn’t working. We modified the hosts file each server and voila.. SharePoint worked locally on each server.

And guess what.. after doing this, the Reporting Services stuff started working as well! :)

Question of course is.. why did it work when SharePoint started working locally on the servers.. So I used Reflector to see what’s going on behind the scenes and apparently what is happening is that the RS integration stuff is using it’s local webservices to get a connection to the ReportServer. And then when the SharePoint is not accessible locally, the webservices cannot be contacted and thus there is no connection to the ReportServer. So the error is telling the truth.. in a way… :)

Adding Themes the supported way!

Robin Meure — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:16:00 GMT

Yes! I’ve created a solution that allows you to add a theme the supported way, meaning that you don’t have to overwrite the default SPThemes.XML that resides in the LAYOUTS folder. The only thing you have to do is add the Theme to the THEMES folder and add your own custom SPThemes.XML somewhere in the 12 hive (a folder in the FEATURES folder could be a good example) and add this path to my solution and you’re done ;)

You might wonder how I’m achieving this.. Well I’ve created a custom .aspx page that lets you choose a theme, based on the out-of-the-box one but unlike the out-of-the-box one that only loads the SPThemes.XML file. I’ve chosen to load several XML files. Yes.. the themeweb.aspx page only loads a XML file.. it’s not getting the collection of themes out of the SPFarm or SPWebApplication object like I thought it was stored in SharePoint. The class SPThemes is just a DataSet.

So with a simple HideCustomAction and CustomAction element in my feature elements file. I can hide the original link to the theme select page and display my own theme selector page.

To add those XML files, I’ve created YAAP (Yet Another Application Page) in Central Administration to define the paths like so:

Then, next to adding custom themes, there’s also an option to hide certain themes from a particular WebApplication (just like my FeatureBlocker tool does with Features)

So when opening the Theme Selection page on a web or a site it looks like this: (compare the available themes with the screenshot above)

Pretty cool eh? ;)

So how does it look like behind the scenes? Well, I’ve used the same source as much as possible that MS used to created the page and added a couple and replaced a couple of things.

To get all the XML files, instead of loading just one I’ve used this

string filePath = String.Format("{0}\\LAYOUTS\\{1}\\SPThemes.xml", 
    SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath("TEMPLATE"), 
    base.Web.Language.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
this.dsSPThemes = new SPThemes();
this.dsSPThemes.DataSetName = "SPThemes";
this.dsSPThemes.Locale = new CultureInfo("en-US");
this.dsSPThemes.Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";
this.dsSPThemes.ReadXml(filePath);
DataView view = FilterThemes(this.dsSPThemes.Tables[0]);
view.Sort = "DisplayName";
this.lstTemplates.DataSource = view;
this.lstTemplates.DataBind();

private DataView FilterThemes(DataTable dataTable)
{
    DataTable themesTable = new DataTable();
    themesTable = dataTable.Clone();
    //Getting the custom .xml themes and load them
    filePaths = GetOtherXmlDefinitions();
    themesTable = ProcessOtherXmlDefinitions(themesTable);
    //Getting the blocked themes
    List<string> templateIds = new List<string>();
    SPWebApplication webApplication = 
       SPWebApplication.Lookup(SPContext.Current.Site.WebApplication.GetResponseUri(SPUrlZone.Default));
    Themes themeCollection = webApplication.GetChild<Themes>("ThemeCollection");
    if (themeCollection != null)
    {
        templateIds = themeCollection.TemplateIDs;
    }
    foreach (DataRow row in dataTable.Rows)
    {
        bool isBlocked = false;
        foreach (string templateId in templateIds)
        {
            if (row["TemplateID"].ToString() == templateId)
            {
                isBlocked = true;
                break;
            }
        }
        if (!isBlocked)
        {
            DataRow themeRow = themesTable.NewRow();
            themeRow.ItemArray = row.ItemArray;
            themesTable.Rows.Add(themeRow);
        }                
    }
    return (new DataView(themesTable));
}

private List<string> GetOtherXmlDefinitions()
{
    SPFarm farm = SPFarm.Local;
    ThemesXmlFileLocations themeFileLocations = 
farm.GetChild<ThemesXmlFileLocations>("ThemesXmlFileLocations");
    if (themeFileLocations != null)
    {
        filePaths = new List<string>();
        filePaths = themeFileLocations.FilePaths;                
    }
    return filePaths;
}
private DataTable ProcessOtherXmlDefinitions(DataTable dataTable)
{
    if (filePaths.Count > 0)
    {
        foreach (string filePath in filePaths)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(filePath))
            {
                string customFilePath = SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(filePath);
                SPThemes spThemes = new SPThemes();
                spThemes.DataSetName = "SPThemes";
                spThemes.Locale = new CultureInfo("en-US");
                spThemes.Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd";
                spThemes.ReadXml(customFilePath);
                foreach (DataRow row in spThemes.Tables[0].Rows)
                {
                    DataRow customThemeRow = dataTable.NewRow();
                    customThemeRow.ItemArray = row.ItemArray;
                    dataTable.Rows.Add(customThemeRow);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return dataTable;
}

And there you have it.. let me know what you think! ~~And yes.. It will be on CodePlex very shortly ;)~~ Get it from CodePlex here!

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Publishing Page creation bug

Robin Meure — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:07:16 GMT

Overview

This post describes an issue with creating pages in a publishing environment using the UI.

Cause

Given the following scenario :

RootWeb with some PageLayouts.
Several subsites with unique permissions
- User A has contribute permissions on a subsite and has read/limited access on the Portal

User A tries to create a new page based on a Page Layout which is a Site ContentType and not yet ‘installed’ on the Pages Library. During creation the user gets the following error:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingPage.SetContentType(SPContentType listContentType) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingPageCollection.
<>c__DisplayClass5.<Add>b__0() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.ULS.SendWatsonOnExceptionTag(ULSTagID tagID, ULSCat categoryID, String output, Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingPageCollection.Add(String name, PageLayout layout) …

If the user tries to create the page again (by pressing F5 in the error screen), the page is successfully created.

If the PageLayout is already installed on the Pages Library there is no error at all and the page is created immediately.

So it seems that the error is raised when SharePoint tries to add the ContentType of the PageLayout during the creation of the page. I’ve tried to mimic these behavior using a console application with the following code :

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://test/a/c/d/e"))
    {   
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
        {
            SPContentType cType = web.Site.RootWeb.ContentTypes["Link"];
            SPList list = web.Lists["Shared Documents"];             
            SetContentType(cType, list);
        }
    }
}
public static void SetContentType(SPContentType contentType, SPList list)
{
    list.ContentTypes.Add(contentType);
    list.Update();
}

The code breaks on the .Add of the ContentType, prompting me with the following error “Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))” but when executing the code again I get the following message “A duplicate name "Contact" was found.” Indicating the ContentType is installed the first time when it threw the Access Denied exception. That confirms that when an user tries to create a page based on a PageLayout that was not already installed on the Pages Library the first time, the PageLayout is correctly installed the second time and thus the page get’s created.

When I change the permissions of User A to Full Control I get no error at all and everything works smoothly.

So what actually is happening, is that the PublishingPageCollection.Add method tries to add the ContentType using the current context and does not check if the user has sufficient permissions to add the ContentType to the Pages Library.

Googling on the subject gave me this blogpost by Bernd who also came across this weird behavior..

Solution

Preventive

A solution can be to add all the (relevant) PageLayouts to each Pages Library using a featurereceiver and/or a stapler to prevent the action (the add action of the ContentType by SharePoint during the creation of the Page) from happening.

Reactive

A console application / timerjob / page with longoperation method that loops through every publishingWeb and adds the PageLayouts from the publishingSite to the Pages Library.

OperationsPage & ApplicationsManagementPage

Robin Meure — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:11:47 GMT

One of the new things I learned when I created the TimerJobOverview solution was to make use of the OperationsPage class.. remember that I talked about creating ApplicationPages and that you should inherit from the LayoutsPageBase or UnsecuredLayoutsPageBase? Well in the case you are developing application pages that will only be available in the Central Admin webapp you have two more choices to choose from :

OperationsPage
ApplicationsManagementPage

I googled on this pages and found the following interesting blogpost from Paul Shkurikhin called : Creating and customizing SharePoint 2007/MOSS Central Administration Application Pages

“.. Both OperationsPage and ApplicationsManagementPage classes overrides just one PageToRedirectOnCancel property from GlobalAdminPageBase…”

I was wondering when I first created my Application Pages how pages in the Application Management and Operations tab knew where to redirect to when you clicked on Cancel and this explains why.. ;)
Next to that you also get some nice properties you can set as well:

AccessibleBySharePointAdminGroup
DefaultContentDatabaseName
PageToRedirectOnMissingPageParameter
RequiredPageParameters

And these methods

RedirectToApplicationManagementPage
RedirectToOperationsPage
RedirectToErrorPage

So if you are going to create Application Pages that will reside within ApplicationManagement or the Operations tab I should recommend on using these pages and make use of the cool properties and methods that are in there!

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Want to configure Timer Jobs ? ;)

Robin Meure — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:58:59 GMT

As you might have noticed I’ve been blogging a lot about Application Pages and TimerJob related stuff in the last few months and this post is about those two same things! So apologies for that.. But you might get a smile on your face when you see the following screenshot:

What have I done and what do you see?

Well, I’ve created yet another application page (YAAP, cool acronym ;) that displays all the current timer job definitions and furthermore it showes for each timer job it’s status. So basically I’ve combined the Timer Job Status page and the Timer Job definitions page. But that wasn’t my main concern to build these pages.. the main concern was to have some more insight in the current defined jobs. Things like, when are they scheduled exactly (when is ‘hourly’ or ‘daily’) and give the administrators the choice to disable and/or delete timerjobs or change the schedule of each one.

Why did I add the option of mass deletion of timerjobs? I’ve seen some farms that when they are using Content Deployment, this service creates a lot of OneTime scheduled timerjobs. When these fail, they are not being deleted properly so it could be that the Timer Job definitions list can be flooded with those OneTime scheduled jobs. So you might want to remove these timerjobs to clean up the definitions list eh? Especially if the Timer service get’s restarted (after a WSP installation for example) then all those one timed jobs are being executed again and will fail again and will stay in the list again..

Why did I add the option of changing the schedule of timerjobs? I’ve seen some farms that had custom timerjobs installed on them but no interface for administrators to change the schedule or to disable the timerjob at all (other then deactivating the feature which came with the solution).

I also wanted to incorporate a feature that would let you create a new OneTime schedule to kick off a timerjob. Since you cannot change the schedule of a existing timerjob to OneTime schedule (you receive a nice error that tells you, you can’t change the schedule:), I have to create a new instance of that particular timerjob and give that one the OneTime schedule to run. And that ‘creating a new instance of that particular job’ is still a work in progress :)

~~It’s going to be on Codeplex.. but currently I’m getting this message on Codeplex : “Unable to save the release. The TFS server is not available”.. so .. sorry ;)~~

~~Meanwhile I’ve uploaded the installer~~ ~~here~~ ~~for you to download and play around with ;)~~

Get it from CodePlex right here !

</Update>

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

New MOSS SP2 bug .. continued and problem solved!

Robin Meure — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:51:11 GMT

Remember that I blogged about problem that I had (New MOSS SP2 bug) where suddenly my SharePoint environment died and was giving me the error in the event viewer :

The schema version (3.1.10.0) of the database SharePoint_AdminContent_5e188b87-c7a8-4e0a-a488-b21a4a89e941 
on mosswin2k3 is not consistent with the expected database schema version (3.1.3.0) on mosswin2k3.  
Connections to this database from this server have been blocked to avoid data loss.  
Upgrade the web front end or the content database to ensure that these versions match.

Well.. I had pinpointed the problem to the fact I was using a function of WSPBuilder called “Copy to GAC”. Now this function copies all the .dll’s from the debug/release folder of your project into the GAC. I worked on a solution which I had worked on my local machine before I took into my VPC to develop on. During that time I had copied all the SharePoint dll’s locally in my project (eg. ‘Copy Local’ of the references were set to True) so I could develop against the SharePoint API.

So you can guess what happens if the “Copy to GAC” function copies old versions of the SharePoint .dll’s in the GAC right? ;) Yes, SharePoint was now dealing with old dll’s in the GAC while the databases were running on a higher version. When I copied the .dll’s back from the ISAPI folder in the 12 hive into the GAC, everything worked again! w00h00w!

Concluding that the schema version error was absolutely right and it made sense that the PSConfig could not find the new types that were introduced with SP2 and thus failed. So I wasn’t a bug but merely a stupid action on my account where I didn’t pay attention to the output window of the WSPBuilder of which .dll’s were copied during the “Copy to GAC” function.

Want to thanks Neil Hodgkinson as well for his valuable time in supporting me with this issue ;)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Item-level permissions for Document Libraries

Robin Meure — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:16:58 GMT

Do you want the same item-level settings on document libraries like there is on lists?.. Confused what I’m talking about? Well it’s basically having this on document libraries as well:

Chakkaradeep wanted it as well and created a solution called the “ILP:Item level permission library”, head over to his blogpost Item Level Permission for Document Libraries-BETA Release, download it, use it and give your feedback!

Great stuff Chak! ;)

Re-using SharePoint controls

Robin Meure — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:22 GMT

This post is going to be a summary of some of some the SharePoint controls I regularly use in my solutions. Cool thing about re-using the controls that are already out there is, that saves time in re-inventing the wheel and you don’t have to worry about keeping the look&feel consistent ;)

First, check out the following blog posts for more information on re-using the out-of-the-box controls of SharePoint

Basically every page in the SharePoint controls section by Karine Bosch (really, really, really good stuff!)
Selector Controls Rock! by Reza Alirezaei
Web part with Toolbar (Part 2) by Reza Alirezaei & RepeatedControls to get a ToolBar look&feel without using the ToolBar control.
Great controls to be aware of when building SharePoint sites by Chris O'Brien

Now some controls are already covered by the links that are stated above, so this is really just a quick summary on the things I like to use most ;)

I’ve given each control a table, in the first row there is a screenshot (if applicable) how to control looks like when it’s rendered by SharePoint,
in the second row there is the declarative way of using the control,
in the third row there is (also, if applicable) some codebehind logic on how to use the control and it’s value.

WebApplicationSelector

<SharePoint:WebApplicationSelector ID="webApplicationSelector" runat="server" />

protected WebApplicationSelector webApplicationSelector;
..
SPWebApplication webApplication = webApplicationSelector.CurrentItem;

SiteAdministrationSelector

<SharePoint:SiteAdministrationSelector runat=server ID="siteadminselector" />

protected SiteAdministrationSelector siteAdministrationSelector;
..
SPSiteAdministration siteAdmin = siteAdministrationSelector.CurrentItem;

SchedulePicker , for more info on this one and when & why you should use this please read “Using the SchedulePicker” ;)

<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="SchedulePicker" 
src="~/_controltemplates/SchedulePicker.ascx" %>
<wssuc:SchedulePicker id="schedulePicker"Hourly="True" 
Weekly="True" Monthly="True" Enabled="True" EnableStateView="True" runat="server"/>

protected SchedulePicker schedulePicker;
..
//Getting a schedule from the picker
SPSchedule schedule = schedulePicker.Schedule;
//Setting the schedule of the picker
schedulePicker.ScheduleString = schedule.ToString();

SPDatePickerControl

<script type="text/javascript" 
src="/_layouts/datepicker.js"></script>
<SharePoint:SPDatePickerControl id="datePickerControl" 
   runat="server"/>

ButtonSection

<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ButtonSection" 
src="~/_controltemplates/ButtonSection.ascx" %>
<wssuc:ButtonSection runat="server">
    <Template_Buttons>
        <asp:Button runat="server" class="ms-ButtonHeightWidth" 
        OnClick="OnClickOK" Text="<%$Resources:wss,multipages_okbutton_text%>" 
        id="btnOk" accesskey="<%$Resources:wss,okbutton_accesskey%>"/>
    </Template_Buttons>
</wssuc:ButtonSection>

When making use of the LayoutsPageBase in your codebehind, you can define the URL of the Cancel button by using this snippet:

public override string PageToRedirectOnCancel
{
    get
    {
        //return base.PageToRedirectOnCancel;
        return "/_layouts/settings.aspx";
    }
}

InputFormSection & InputFormControl

<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" 
TagName="InputFormSection" 
src="~/_controltemplates/InputFormSection.ascx" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" 
TagName="InputFormControl" 
src="~/_controltemplates/InputFormControl.ascx" %>
<wssuc:InputFormSection Title="InputFormSection"
    Description="InputFormSection Description" runat="server">		
    <template_inputformcontrols>            
        <wssuc:InputFormControl runat="server" LabelText="InputFormControl Text">
            <Template_Control>
                <%--Put a control here--%>
                </Template_Control>
        </wssuc:InputFormControl> 
    </template_inputformcontrols> 
</wssuc:InputFormSection>

InputFormTextBox, notice there are two InputFormTextBoxes shown here. One with the RichTexT property set to true and the other set to false. So with a simple property change you can get the nicely and shiny FullHTML textbox.

<SharePoint:InputFormTextBox ID="ApproveMailSubject" RichText="false" 
runat="server" Width="100%"/>
<SharePoint:InputFormTextBox ID="ApproveMailContent" RichText="true" 
	RichTextMode="FullHtml" 
	runat="server" 
	TextMode="MultiLine" 
Rows="20"/>

InputFormRequiredFieldValidator

<wssawc:InputFormTextBox ID="uxFirstName" RichText="false" 
    TextMode="Singleline" runat="server" Width="100%"/>	
<wssawc:InputFormRequiredFieldValidator ID="uxFirstNameValidator"
    ControlToValidate="uxFirstName" Text="Error" runat="server"
    ErrorMessage ="First name is required" 
    EnableClientScript="true" Display="Dynamic">
</wssawc:InputFormRequiredFieldValidator>

InputFormRangeValidator

<wssawc:InputFormRangeValidator 
    ID="inputFormRangeVal" 
    Type="Integer" MinimumValue="1" MaximumValue="30"
    ControlToValidate="uxNumberOfDays"
    ErrorMessage="Value must between 1 and 30" 
    Runat="server" />

ToolBar & ToolBarButton

<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ToolBar" 
src="~/_controltemplates/ToolBar.ascx" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="wssuc" TagName="ToolBarButton" 
src="~/_controltemplates/ToolBarButton.ascx" %>
<wssuc:ToolBar id="Toolbar" runat="server">
	<template_buttons>
		<wssuc:ToolBarButton runat="server"
			id="ViewSites"
			Text="View Sites"
			ToolTip=""
			OnClick="ViewSites_Link"
			ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/newitem.gif"
			Padding="2px"
			AccessKey="V" />			
	</template_buttons>
	<template_rightbuttons>
		<SharePoint:WebApplicationSelector id="Selector" 
runat="server"/>
	</template_rightbuttons>
</wssuc:ToolBar>

To use the ToolBar in your WebPart you can load the UserControls and reference them using this:

protected ToolBarButton ToolBarButton;
protected ToolBar ToolBar;
..
//Adding a ToolBarButton
ToolBarButton = 
    (ToolBarButton)Page.LoadControl("/_controltemplates/ToolBarButton.ascx");
ToolBarButton.Click += new EventHandler(ToolBarButton_Click);
ToolBarButton.Text = "Complete selected tasks";
ToolBarButton.ImageUrl = "/_layouts/images/CheckNames.gif";
//Adding the ToolBar
ToolBar = 
    (ToolBar)Page.LoadControl("/_controltemplates/ToolBar.ascx");
ToolBar.Buttons.Controls.Add(ToolBarButton);
this.Controls.Add(ToolBar);

Why are PortalSiteMapProvider properties defined in the web.config?

Robin Meure — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:40:01 GMT

FYI, this post is a rant on a MOSS specific component called PortalSiteMapProvider.. ;)

I was asked by a the customer where I’m currently working for if it was possible to display more than 50 items on a fly-out in the global navigation. Being the SharePoint guru that I am, I started googling on how to adjust this.. Quickly I found the DynamicChildLimit property on the PortalSiteMapProvider class in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation namespace!

But then I quickly found out that I needed to modify the web.config to set this property?! WHY?!?!

Why did the team decide to put this type of parameters in the web.config? Why not create an application page in the Central Administration where you can view and set all those parameters.. I mean.. it’s not just one parameter like the DynamicChildLimit in the web.config. But, out of the box, there are several properties defined which you can set like:

NavigationType
EncodeOutput
IncludePages
IncludeHeadings
IncludeAuthoredLinks

I can understand that you need to register all the SiteMap providers in the web.config, but I don’t understand why the properties of the providers are set in the web.config. I know it’s a ASP.NET component, but since it’s part of the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation namespace and they override initialization method I would have figured they would get the parameters from somewhere else..

  if (config["DynamicChildLimit"] != null)
    {
        this.DynamicChildLimit = int.Parse(config["DynamicChildLimit"]);
    }

If someone knows why it’s implemented like this.. please let me know because I would love to know it! :)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MOSS

Speaking at the SDN Event on 26th of June

Robin Meure — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:39:06 GMT

Together with SharePoint legends Box Fox and Spence Harbar, I have the privilege to also host a session at the Software Development Network in Houten (the Netherlands) on the 26th of June! While Bob and Spence are covering the following topics

Best Practices for Virtualization with Hyper V and SharePoint (Bob)
Mythbusters – debunking common SharePoint Farm Misconceptions (Spence)
Kerberos Part 1: no ticket touting here. Does SharePoint add another head? (Bob & Spence)
Kerberos Part 2: Advanced Scenarios and additional considerations. (Bob & Spence)

I will be talking about SharePoint Application Pages..

When you are developing custom solutions on top of SharePoint you often need a page (or maybe even more) in Central Admin where you can configure your solution. And of course you want to this page to look like a SharePoint page and probably you also want to use the SharePoint controls because, if you are like me, you are a lazy developer and don’t want to reinvent the wheel over and over gain. Aside to settings the configuration you are also interested in how to store your configuration.
My session will be about creating those fancy application pages and can be summarized into the following bullets :

What is an Application Page?
What SharePoint controls are there for me to re-use?
How do I store my configuration?
The things I’ve learned with custom timer jobs

For more information, check out the SDN site and register! ;)

New MOSS SP2 bug?

Robin Meure — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:09:21 GMT

Did an update on this post at New MOSS SP2 bug .. continued and problem solved!

In short, I was copying old dll’s in the GAC using WSPBuilder. In my project I had old references to SharePoint .dll’s copied locally in my project folder. So while executing the “Copy to GAC” method of WSPBuilder, the ‘old’ .dl’s were copied into the GAC. By doing that it caused my WFE thinking that it was running an old version while the database was thinking it was running a new version.

</Update>

I twittered about this problem two weeks ago I merely thought that it’s possibly my own fault because of the development work I was doing.. So recreated my environment by reinstalling SharePoint and everything was fine (though it’s quite irritating that when you attach your ‘old’ contentdatabases to your new farm it starts indexing everything from scratch and the mssearch/msddmn and sqlserver starts consuming all resources.. and that’t not funny on a VPC ;) but after a clean SharePoint (with SP2) install everything was fine again..’Till now! I got the same error back again.

First it starts with this when navigating to a SharePoint site in my browser..

[SPUpgradeException: An error has occurred on the server.http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=96177]
   Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPContentDatabase.ValidateDatabaseSchemaCompatibility() +1805
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.PreinitializeServer(SPRequest request) +61
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.InitializeSPRequest() +290
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.EnsureSPRequest() +58
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.get_Request() +54
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.GetWebPartPageContent(Uri pageUrl, PageView requestedView, HttpContext context, Boolean forRender, Boolean includeHidden, Boolean mainFileRequest, Boolean fetchDependencyInformation, Boolean& ghostedPage, Byte& verGhostedPage, String& siteRoot, Guid& siteId, Int64& bytes, Guid& docId, UInt32& docVersion, String& timeLastModified, Byte& level, Object& buildDependencySetData, UInt32& dependencyCount, Object& buildDependencies, SPWebPartCollectionInitialState& initialState, Object& oMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, String& redirectUrl, Boolean& ObjectIsList, Guid& listId) +1492
   Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModuleData.FetchWebPartPageInformationForInit(HttpContext context, SPWeb spweb, Boolean mainFileRequest, String path, Boolean impersonate, Boolean& fGhostedPage, Byte& verGhostedPage, Guid& docId, UInt32& docVersion, String& timeLastModified, SPFileLevel& spLevel, String& masterPageUrl, String& customMasterPageUrl, String& webUrl, String& siteUrl, Guid& siteId, Object& buildDependencySetData, SPWebPartCollectionInitialState& initialState, String& siteRoot, String& redirectUrl, Object& oMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, Boolean& objectIsList, Guid& listId, Int64& bytes) +718
   Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModuleData.GetFileForRequest(HttpContext context, SPWeb web, Boolean exclusion, String virtualPath) +232
   Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModule.InitContextWeb(HttpContext context, SPWeb web) +104
   Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.SPWebEnsureSPControl(HttpContext context) +395
   Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPControl.GetContextWeb(HttpContext context) +31
   Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPRequestModule.PostResolveRequestCacheHandler(Object oSender, EventArgs ea) +383
   System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +68
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +75

And the EventViewer showed this error:

The schema version (3.1.8.0) of the database SharePoint_AdminContent_3b1b1115-48b5-40d1-afe3-142692142cd6 
on dev is not consistent with the expected database schema version (3.1.3.0) on dev.  
Connections to this database from this server have been blocked to avoid data loss.  
Upgrade the web front end or the content database to ensure that these versions match.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Looks quite scary since the SharePoint_AdminContent database is the contentdatabase of the Central Administration WebApplication. But it makes sense for me, since I’m using this Web Application extensively in my solutions. On the other hand I find it quite strange because it’s not the first time that I’m doing this and did not do anything that obscure or scary.

So of course, I tried to do an upgrade using the STSADM –o upgrade –url <centraladmin> –inplace.. When I checked in the Upgrade.log I found this error

[SPDelegateManager] [DEBUG] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: No assembly manifest found.
[SPDelegateManager] [ERROR] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: Failed to call GetTypes()
[SPDelegateManager] [ERROR] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: Could not load type 'Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.Health.SPHealthAnalysisRule' from assembly 'Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.
[SPDelegateManager] [ERROR] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: Failed to call GetTypes()
[SPDelegateManager] [ERROR] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: Could not load type 'Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.Health.SPHealthAnalysisRule' from assembly 'Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.
[SPManager] [ERROR] [5/29/2009 11:54:04 AM]: CanUpgrade [SPFarm Name=SharePoint_Config] failed.

Now if I’m not mistaken, the Health class is added to the Microsoft.Office.Administration namespace since SP2 right?

Next thing was to try do an upgrade using the PSConfig tool.. and I got an Access Denied error

An exception of type System.Security.SecurityException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Access denied.
System.Security.SecurityException: Access denied.
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPService.Update()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update(Boolean ensure)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.InstallServiceInConfigDB(Boolean provisionTheServiceToo, String serviceRegistryKeyName)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.InstallServices(Boolean provisionTheServicesToo)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ServicesTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
The Zone of the assembly that failed was:
MyComputer

So I think the error about the “Could not load type..” and the SecurityException are linked to each other.

I tried the ‘execadmsvcjobs’ command to see if that give me any errors.. it didn’t.. but the ‘sync’ command did throw an error and in the ULS it showed this :

05/29/2009 13:47:02.21 	STSADM.EXE (0x17E0)
0x0C44	1597  6y3d	Exception	 
System.Security.SecurityException: Access denied.     
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update()     
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPJobDefinition.Update()     
at Microsoft.Office.Server.CommandLine.SyncCommands.ProcessScheduleParams(
String multipleWebAppUrls, SPSchedule sweepSchedule, SPSchedule syncSchedule)     
at Microsoft.Office.Server.CommandLine.SyncCommands.Execute()  
The Zone of the assembly that failed was:  MyComputer

Some background information on what I was doing when this happened, I was working on a custom timer job and restarted the Timer service a lot of times.. And ‘suddenly' the environment was down. When it happened a couple of weeks ago I did a solution install and during an installation of a solution package the Timer Service is also restarted. And when a Timer service restarts, a lot of timer jobs are also being executed right? Maybe the upgrade timer job was still busy trying to update the content database of my Central Administration but never got the chance or something..

Found some blogposts that describe the problem after applying a hotfix and servicepacks

Only ‘weird’ thing is that this didn’t happen to me after a the service pack update but after two weeks after applying the service pack. So I’m still convinced it’s a timer job issue..

</Update>

Up to this point I don’t have a solution for this problem, but if I do I will update this post.. or if you have the solution.. let me know! ;)

TunnelPoint and ProduShare

Robin Meure — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:16:59 GMT

I don’t know if you have been following the posts from Hans and Daniel about TunnelPoint and (the assembly free solution store called) ProduShare but I wanted to express my feelings about the products we have launched.. Though I was a bit skeptical at first when we started months ago.. but now as both products have launched I’m really proud and have much believe that the product will be a succes :)

Why? Well.. well hopefully because we are the first ones who took the path of (the more popular getting) talking to SharePoint without using the Object Model and taking the next step..

Just to show you that the clientside ‘development’ is getting more popular, check out these posts:

I bet you are probably asking yourself “so what do TunnelPoint and ProduShare” have to do with this? Well.. let me tell you..

TunnelPoint, this is basically “the BDC in the cloud” (copyright by Daniel). What it does it connects a SharePoint list with a webservice that is available in the cloud, so it’s actually a broker between SharePoint and the cloud. So instead of a webpart that is showing stockqoutes in your site, we push stockqoutes in your SharePoint list. Meaning that it is SharePoint data.. and you know what that means.. it means that you can act on it and use it using out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality like alerts, workflow, views with totals, max, sum’s that creates a much more richer experience than a simple webpart does that shows data that is and stays external.. Imagine that with the availability of hundreds of webservices/api’s that provide some sort of value that you want to have in SharePoint.

ProduShare, we all know the fantastic 40 templates right? We all know custom themes right and masterpages right? What is the downside of these things right now? They require server access to be installed (well maybe not the masterpages (but that’s detail ;)).. so what if you have a SharePoint environment where you cannot touch your server, like SharePoint online for example. Or you are a power-user and your IT department won’t let you use SharePoint Designer to customize your site. Well now, if your SharePoint environment is accessible via the internet, you can customize with a single click using ProduShare! ;) Just think of it as the Appstore for the IPhone but then for SharePoint..

Please note, this post probably sounds very commercial but it’s really not my intention.. though of course I’m very biased about this whole thing since it’s our own product ;)

If you are interested in what some folks of the community thought about TunnelPoint check out the following posts :

And if you want to be informed with all the things that are currently going on with these products or you want to try it out and give us feedback, tune into Hans’s blog! :)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,TunnelPoint,Assembly free solutions,BPOS

UpdateListItems vs ProcessBatchData to create Folders

Robin Meure — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:24:23 GMT

Currently I’m busy in creating huge amounts of folders and I want to have the best performance doing so. So.. I know about the ProcessBatchData method on the SPWeb object that is designed to do ‘batch’ stuff in a very optimized way. Only problem was that I never created folders by using this method.

I thought “hey.. a folder is just a list item with it’s content type set to Folder right?” So by defining the ContentType, the folders were created!! Yeah!! But… SharePoint now was treating this ListItem as a File so it uses the “Name” column instead of the “Title” column to display the Title. So every folder looked like this :

To fix this I tried the adding following fields :

BaseName, generating error “Bad parameter passed to Web Server Extensions. Check the information you entered and try again”
Name, generating error “One or more field types are not installed properly. Go to the list settings page to delete these fields”

in combination with the “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” schema and without but all the same result.

Here is the xml snippet which I use if you are interested ;)

string methodFormat = "<Method ID=\"{0}\">" +
"<SetList>{1}</SetList>" +
"<SetVar Name=\"ID\">New</SetVar>" +
"<SetVar Name=\"Cmd\">Save</SetVar>" +
"<SetVar Name=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Title\">{2}</SetVar>" +                
"<SetVar Name=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#ContentType\">Folder</SetVar>" +
"</Method>";

I found the Save Method (RPC) page on MSDN which explains a lot of this mysterious CAML and tried a lot of different things but didn’t get any further. Maybe that was a good thing as well since it states that “This method is deprecated and may not be supported in future releases. Instead, use the following Web service method: UpdateListItems Web service method.” So I went there and to my suprise (and delight) the method also accepts a ‘batch’ string. So by using the following snippet I managed to create all the folders I wanted :

string methodFormatListItem = "<Method ID='{0}' Cmd='New'> " +
"<Field Name='FSObjType'>1</Field>" +
"<Field Name='BaseName'>{1}</Field>" +
"<Field Name='ID'>New</Field></Method>";

Only thing that keeps me worried is ‘ how bad is the performance when using the webservice instead of the ProcessBatchData? ’ By doing a test that creates 100 folders 9 times in a row I came up with the following results table (each number is the time measured in milliseconds) :

ProcessBatchData	UpdateListItems
1916	3236
874	963
1058	846
1310	967
682	1042
824	1128
674	1012
721	1424
648	1077

And in a graph it looks like this:

So actually only the first hit is the most expensive one but after the first one, it becomes quite reasonable in my opinion. Of course the ProcessBatchData is the better performing one but the webservice wasn’t that bad as I thought it would be.

Useful references:

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

zevenseas FeatureBlocker updated

Robin Meure — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:38:51 GMT

Just to let you know, I’ve updated my FeatureBlocker solution. Now, next to disabling the activate/deactivate button, I’ve added the following ‘features’ :

Hide the entire feature (row), this is great if you have an environment that has a lot of features and you want to hide those from your users.
Redirect the users to another url once they click on the activate button
Exclude farm administrators from having this ‘restrictions’ in place.

Here is a screenie how it looks in the application page in Central Admin ;)

So.. what are you waiting for? Grab it from codeplex here ! ;) And let me know what you think!

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Why I love twitter

Robin Meure — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:51:26 GMT

This morning I had some troubles with my VPC.. for some weird reason, some webapplications kept prompting to authenticate while working locally on my VPC. But when accessing them remotely I had no problems at all. And I had the same problem last week, but then a simple reboot did the trick.. it didn’t do the trick this morning so I asked in twitter the following question :

quick #SharePoint question : wondering why all of a sudden certain webapps on my vpc keep asking for credentials.. resulting in 401.1's

And literally within minutes I had this result to solve my problem!! ;)

This truly, for me, makes twitter such a powerful social tool to have! So thanks all!

FYI : if you want to know the solution, go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 and check method 2. That did the trick for me ;)

Assembly free Twitter-like solution for SharePoint

Robin Meure — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:56:59 GMT

I’m really impressed with the work that Daniel is being doing lately with all the assembly free stuff.. and now he created a twitter like solution that is completely assembly free! And as Daniel says :

To be clear, this is simply a Site Template. Nothing more, nothing less

You obviously want to know how it looks right? Well here’s a screenshot..

and if you are not really convinced you can try it out here on our demo page and use the following accounts to play with :

Usernames: ZSHOSTED\teamstatus, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus2, ZSHOSTED\teamstatus3
Passwords: (passwords are the same as username, eg. teamstatus, teamstatus2, teamstatus3

Or if you want to download it (since it’s nothing more than a site template) you can grab it here

Let us know what you think of it ! ;)

About custom Timer Jobs and SPJobLockTypes

Robin Meure — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:20:23 GMT

If you are just starting with creating your own custom timer jobs, you probably run into the posts of AC (Creating Custom SharePoint Timer Jobs , MOSS Timer Jobs - Create Your Own!) and his MSDN article Creating Custom Timer Jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and you start using the examples provided and build your very own first timer job right? (I know I did .. and if it wasn’t for his posts and articles in the first place, this post wouldn’t exist ;)

So what is this post about then? Well.. in all the examples provided you will see when defining the timer job the SPJobLockType is set to “ContentDatabase”.

public SharePointWarmupJob (SPWebApplication webApp)
      : base(Globals.JobName, webApp, null, SPJobLockType.ContentDatabase) {
      this.Title = Globals.JobName;

And when referring to the SDK for explanation this is what it says :

- SPJobLockType.ContentDatabase   Locks the content database associated with the job
- SPJobLockType.Job   Locks the job to prevent multiple instances of the job from running on a single server
- SPJobLockType.None   No locking.

There is another post called Where is My Timer Job? by Scot Hillier where he tests what the real difference is between the Job and the None LockTypes and he discovers when setting these timerjobs in a multi server farm that the Job LockType ensures that it only runs on one server. And the None ensures that the job runs on every server.

But Scot doesn’t mention what happens if you use the ContentDatabase LockType.. in short, it’s almost the same as the Job one, meaning that it only runs one server.. BUT.. as Peter find out at Help needed with custom timerjob in SharePoint 2007 , the job runs for each ContentDatabase that the WebApplication is associated with. Another (quite annoying) fact is that it is not that predictable when it will run on the next content database.

This usually is being discovered when the timer job is already in production (it’s pretty safe to assume that most developers don’t have multiple content databases associated with their WebApplications..) and at that time you don’t have a clue why it’s displaying this kind of behavior.

So if you are not doing stuff that is bound to a specific ContentDatabase (like moving or backing up sitecollections (since sitecollections are stored per contentdatabase)) you are most of the time better of using the Job SPLockType.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,TimerJobs