SharePoint 2007 & 2010 development

Reserved Querystring Parameters In SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:18:00 +0000

This is probably the 100th post on the net about...

"Be careful when naming querystring parameters in your SharePoint applications"

But you can't say it enough. They cause trouble!

For more info read this.

Could not access the Search administration database. A generic error occurred while trying to access the database to obtain the schema version info.

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:05:00 +0000

Deleting the following registry key - did the trick for me:

“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS\Services\Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Administration.SPSearchService”

In fact, it's just one of the things that need to be verified.
Read this post for more info.

Default location picture upload in RTE

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:55:00 +0000

If you want to insert a picture in the rich text editor directly from your computer, you will notice that the RTEUploadDialog pops up in which you can browse for a file and select a location.

Unfortunately, you can’t set the default location.

Workaround

Option 1: Because the “Upload to” dropdown list is filled up alphabetically, you can rename the library you want (eg. let it start with an underscore).

Option 2: (Not supported by MS) You can write some javascript to select another default value for the dropdown list. Insert your javascript into the RTEUploadDialog application page (/_layouts/RteUploadDialog.aspx).

As far as I know, this page is not only used for uploading images, so you probably have to take into account the querystring parameter ‘Dialog’ (/_layouts/RteUploadDialog.aspx?LCID=1033&Dialog=UploadImage).

Reporting Services: RSViewerPage

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:13:00 +0000

The main file used for displaying reports is the RSViewerPage.aspx. This page contains a breadcrumb and a webpart called ReportViewerWebPart. This webpart renders a toolbar, the report and a parameters pane.

Hide buttons from the toolbar

I saw a couple of articles of people who disable some toolbar buttons by diving into the ConfigurationInfo table of the Reporting Services Database. This method will work for a few buttons, but not for all of them. I discovered that you don’t need to adjust that database table at all. You can use the ToolBarItemsDisplayMode property of the ReportViewer WebPart. This property allows you to hide/show specific parts of the ReportViewer’s toolbar. Be aware, this property is an enumeration field.

For example: ToolBarItemsDisplayMode=’223’ will hide:

Open with Report Builder (Action Menu)
Subscribe (Action Menu)
Atom icon

Before:

After:

Why 223? You have to make the sum of the values of the parts you want to include in the toolbar. The values are shown in the reference table below:

You can set the property by adding the property in the RSViewerPage.aspx like

<RSWP:ReportViewerWebPart id="m_sqlRsWebPart" runat="server" SuppressWebPartChrome="true" Height="100%" ToolBarItemsDisplayMode="223" Width="100%" />

You can pass the property as a querystring rv:ToolBarItemsDisplayMode=”223”

Ogone – Feedback Parameters

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:43:00 +0000

The merchant can send some extra parameters in the hidden fields of the order form, in order to retrieve them as feedback parameters after the payment.

One of the hidden fields is the PARAMPLUS parameter. This field submits some parameters and their values you would like returned in the feedback request (as a querystring).

Be careful when you generate your SHA-OUT hash based on the incoming feedback parameters. You have to exclude all the extra parameters, you sent with the PARAMPLUS parameter, before generating the hash.

SharePoint Designer 2010 Action: Start Approval Process

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:21:00 +0000

The “start approval process” is a brand new workflow activity available in SPS 2010.

The Start Approval Process action behaves like a pre-built workflow—the logic is already defined in the action. The action has several different phases built into it that defines task behaviors, task process behaviors, logging to the History Log, e-mail notifications, and completion conditions. Although the action comes with pre-built logic, it still needs information from you—such as the users (the reviewers), the order in which the tasks are to be routed to the participants—serial or parallel, the default is serial, and the due dates for task completion.

You can customize the predefined logic within the activity by clicking on the ‘approval hyperlink’ (as shown below).

A quick example:

The out-of-the-box approval workflow includes the following settings in his association form: End on first rejection & End on document change.

As far as I know, you can’t set these settings by default in this activity. If you want to apply this behavior to your own build workflow you can, for example, customize your initiation / association form with two extra checkboxes and pass the values to the workflow or you just can remove the condition so that they’re ‘checked’ by default. The screenshots below give you an idea of how to (remove the ‘if clauses’ way) enable this behavior.

You can find the behavior of the End on first rejection in the ‘change the behavior of a single task’ section.

First, move up the logic within the condition. Then you can remove the condition.

You can find the behavior of the End on document change in the ‘change the behavior of the overall task process’ section.

First, move up the logic within the condition. Then you can remove the condition.

That’s it.

Slidedecks BIWUG on SPS2010 WCM and FAST Search 2010 available

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:14:00 +0000

You can find them here.

Getting started with the Client Object Model in SP 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:38:00 +0000

Some useful resources to get started the with the Client OM...

How To: exclude welcome pages in search results

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:52:00 +0000

Remember there was a ‘welcome page search retrieval’ issue in SP 2007? If not… take a look at http://svengillis.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-searchresults-for-content-available.html

Fortunately, this issue has been fixed in SP 2010. In some cases, you still want to exclude welcome pages in the search results – just like in the old days.

To do this - follow the steps below:

Navigate to the Search Service Application
Make sure you did a full crawl on your content source
Create a new rule in your search scope (all sites or whatever) as follow:

By creating this rule you’ll eliminate the site URL (eg. /news) items. At this moment, the site default page URL is still included (/news/pages/default.aspx). In the next step we are going to eliminate them too…
Create a new Crawl Rule
Make sure you’ll do a full crawl again and that the Search Scopes are updated
Notice that no welcome pages are found in the search results

Compare SharePoint Editions

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 07:38:00 +0000

A quick reference to compare SharePoint 2010 Editions (Foundation, Standard, Enterprise)

Off-Topic: Iphone 4 vs HTC evo

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Multi-value lookup fields and CQWP 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:25:00 +0000

The CQWP in SharePoint 2010 supports querying multi-value lookup fields against a single list or single-value lookup fields in multiple lists, but it does not support querying multi-value lookup fields against multiple lists.

Inconvenient EditmodePanel Control

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:02:00 +0000

You can use the EditModePanel control in a publishing scenario to control the visibility of other controls in relation to the display mode. With other words – it acts like a container that shows or hides its child controls based on the mode of the page. You can use the PageDisplayMode property to indicate whether this control is visible in Edit Mode or Display Mode.

<PublishingWebControls:EditModePanel id="EditModePanel1"
runat="server" PageDisplayMode=”Display”/>

I frequently embed two EditModePanels into my pagelayout. One with its PageDisplayMode ‘Display’ and one with ‘Edit’. This way you have a styled and an non-styled presentation of your field controls. The styled presentation will be shown only in display mode. The non-styled presentation will be only used in edit mode.

While this works great in SP 2007 – I discovered that this control behaves a little different in SP 2010. I discovered that it only works as expected if you’re an authenticated user. So, what’s the difference? Well… I noticed that when you set the PageDisplayMode property to “Display” – The child controls will never be shown for anonymous users.

I was wondering why this is the case in SP 2010, while this works great in SP 2007, so I investigated the EditModePanel class in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing assembly and found the evil-doer. MS added an extra check in the CalculateShouldRender method, which prevent rendering for anonymous users:

if (!ConsoleUtilities.CheckPermissions(SPBasePermissions.EditListItems))
{
this.shouldRender = false;
}

Workaround

Create your own Panel webcontrol and write the exact same logic as the EditModePanel control – without that little check. You can check the form mode like this

if (SPContext.Current.FormContext.FormMode == SPControlMode.Display)
{
//display mode
}
else
{
//edit mode
}

Attention: Don’t write your logic in the overridden Render method, use the AddParsedSubObject method instead. If you use the Render method, you will have some problems with the Ribbon.

Cooliris 3D Wall

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:54:00 +0000

This is definitely the most amazing picture - video gallery I have ever seen.

Cooliris is a browser plug-in that revolutionizes how you find, view, and share photos and videos. Whether you're browsing the Web or your desktop, Cooliris presents media on an infinite "3D wall" that lets you enjoy content without clicking page to page.

Watch the following demo to see this cooliris stuff in action. Definitely don’t forget to watch it in full screen mode. To find out more detailed information – go to Cooliris.

Btw, I already implemented the gallery in my site and it’s working great.

The PNG Gamma Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:10:00 +0000

While working on a design I came across a strange issue with my background image (.PNG format) in IE. The colors of my image were darker… which off course ruined my whole design.

Formulation of the problem:

The problem arises from the fact that browsers have traditionally treated the RGB values specified in CSS (and HTML), GIF and JPEG as identical (numerically and colorimetrically). With PNG, however, the stored gamma information is used to "correct" the RGB values prior to displaying the image, which means that they won't match other design elements when viewed in certain browsers.

I was able to remove the gamma information with a freeware PNG optimizer, called PNGCrush.

For more information about this issue – read:

Changed event in browser-enabled InfoPath form

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:46:00 +0000

I have designed an InfoPath form and added managed code to the changed event for a field. This works in the client preview. However, after deploying as a browser-enabled form, my changed event never triggered.

The reason is quite obvious. The form requires a postback to execute our managed code in the changed event. To realize this, you need to modify the postback settings of your control.

Experimenting with the ListFieldIterator webcontrol

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:48:00 +0000

In some circumstances you’ll need to display a SPListItem in its display, edit or new mode in an application page for example. In that case you can iterate through each SPField of an SPList, find the appropriate webcontrol of the field’s datatype and set the appropriate rendering mode of the webcontrol.

The quickest / easiest way to do so is by using the BaseFieldControl class.This way it doesn’t matter which field you want to render. The right control will be used.

BaseFieldControl webControl = [SPField].FieldRenderingControl;
webControl.ListId = list.ID;
webControl.ItemId = item.ID;
webControl.FieldName = [SPField].Title;
webControl.ID = GetControlID([SPField]);
webControl.ControlMode = mode;

Another way to display a SPListItem in your custom webpart or application page is by using the ListFieldIterator Webcontrol. This webcontrol renders each SPField of a SPListItem with an appropriate webcontrol. That way you get the SharePoint look & feel and the validation of your form for free.

If you’d like to use the ListFieldIterator and would like to give the user the ability to display, edit or create a new SPListItem without having permissions on the SPList itself … you must set the SetContextWeb property of the ListFieldIterator with your elevated SPWeb object.

References:

WCM in SharePoint Server 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:08:00 +0000

So what’s new in SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management?

Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2010

Part 1 - Improvements to the Core SharePoint Platform & How the Benefit SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management

Part 2 – What’s Improved with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management

Part 3 – What’s New with SharePoint Server 2010 Web Content Management

SPContext in HTTP Module

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:39:00 +0000

Got the 'System.InvalidOperationException' when accessing SPContext in your HTTP Module? To solve this, make sure you attach your eventhandler to the application.PreRequestHandlerExecute event instead of the application.BeginRequest event.

How To: Extend Telerik RadEditor FlashManager with FLV Player

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:46:00 +0000

As you maybe know, the full-featured version of the Telerik RadEditor is able to use flash objects (.SWF files). Customers like this feature, especially in a WCM environment. However, some customers feel the need to play .FLV files into the RadEditor. Since this isn’t supported by Telerik, we have to build it ourself.

Below I’ll guide you through the steps necessary to extend the FlashManager Dialog.

Preparation

Download (buy) the full featured-version of Telerik RadEditor (at the moment of writing the latest version is 5.5)

I noticed that the HTML field control strips out OBJECT tags. For this reason, place the Telerik RadEditor on top of a NOTE field.

Download and upload a FLV player into your SharePoint environment ( Style Library, Layouts folder, …). You can download the player here.

Extend the Telerik RadEditor

Once you are done with the preparation you can start with the real work…

Extend the configfile.xml with the following properties:

Download the Telerik AJAX RadControls sourcecode (I think this is only possible if you have a developer license). There you’ll find a usercontrol, named FlashManager.ascx. Copy this file into the /_layouts/[ProjectName]/RadEditor/EditorDialogs/ folder. Note: This path is equal to the ExternalDialogsPath value available in the configfile.

Open the FlashManager.ascx and search for the _getParams method. In this method you can write all your FLV magic. The code below is just a snippet.

Now we are able to select, set parameters and place a FLV player into our editor.

If you find any difficulties with the implementation of a FLV player… feel free to make a comment or contact the Telerik RadEditor Team.

Some cool stuff in InfoPath 2010!

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:10:00 +0000

Looks like we will use InfoPath 2010 a bit more in our daily SharePoint development... Using it, you now can customize SharePoint list forms by modifying the layout, create views, adding validation, etc...

In InfoPath 2010, we’ve made some big investments to make it much easier to build rich forms-based applications on top of the SharePoint Server 2010 platform.

For more info read - What's new in InfoPath 2010?

Is it time to B!ng?

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:57:00 +0000

Custom Document Library Item check-in throws error

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:52:00 +0000

I got the miserable "Value does not fall within the expected range" error after checking in an item in my newly created custom document library with a custom content type.

Since the cause of the error "Didn't fall within my knowledge range" I had to google ... and *bing!* found what I was looking for.

Lesson learned: Do not set the "required" attribute to true in your content type definition.

Accessibility: Empty text alternatives for ASP.NET image control

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:08:00 +0000

While building an accessible website you need to take into account that the following elements must have an ALT attribute:

img
area
input with type="image"

Why we need it?

The ALT attribute is designed to be an alternative text description for images.

What are the benefits?

Enhance the browsing experience of visitors with disabilities.
If somehow the image is not able to load, then a visitor will see the description of ALT attribute. This will also help when someone is using text based browsers like Lynx.
By having ALT attribute you are increasing the keyword density which is very good in terms of
Search Engine Optimalisation (SEO).

What about decorative images?

The alt attribute for decorative images should be empty [alt=""] to meet the accessibility and XHML standards. If you include an empty alt attribute, screen readers will skip over the image. If you don't... the screenreader will read the entire URL of the image, which is quite annoying for the visitor.

What about the ASP.NET image control?

By default, when the AlternateText property is not set, the Image control does not include the alt attribute to specify the alternate text in the control rendering. If you set this attribute to be empty [AlternateText=""] you will notice that the control ignores it too.

Fortunately, since .NET 2.0, the image control contains a GenerateEmptyAlternateText property. It specifies whether or not the control creates an empty string as an alternate text. Set the GenerateEmptyAlternateText property to true to always include the alternate text attribute in rendered output for the Image control.

Off-topic: Have you ever been to New York?

noreply@blogger.com (Komakino) — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Take a look at that wonderful Aerial Virtual tour.

Turn on your speakers
Left below you'll find more views
Don't forget to enter the fullscreen

@TomPoint: Don't look at it.Within a couple weeks you'll see it in reality. :)