Tom Resing's SharePoint 2010 Blog: Posts

Removing the Name ActiveX on 2010 the 2007 way

Thomas.Resing — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 01:15:29 GMT

Body:

I got a new laptop for work last week and noticed that tomresing.com was asking readers to install that silly Name ActiveX control. Actually, I noticed sharepointrunner.com was showing it first and after Mark fixed his so quickly, I figured I better do the same.

Aside

You may be more familiar with my other new coworkers like Shane, Todd, John, Randy, Laura, Jennifer and Raymond. However, fanatical SharePoint Engineer Mark Watts, on the Rackspace Managed SharePoint team, has an excellent looking SharePoint blog hosted on SharePoint at Rackspace with almost 10 branding focused posts since the beginning of 2012.

KB OG

KB 932519 written for 2007, still applies if you don’t have access to the Central Admin method. However, the steps in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article still require access to the server if you follow them exactly. At my current host, I don’t, and a slight modification of the steps gets the desired results.

No Server Access Steps

Do: use the same script as the KB

function ProcessImn()
{
       if (typeof(ctx)=="undefined") return;
       if (ctx.CurrentUserId == -1) return;
       if (EnsureIMNControl() && IMNControlObj.PresenceEnabled)
       {
              imnElems=document.getElementsByName("imnmark");
              imnElemsCount=imnElems.length;
              ProcessImnMarkers();
       }
}

Do: Save the script to file named initNoPresence.js

Don’t: save it to the SharePoint Root, put it somewhere like the SiteAssets folder

Do: insert the following link in your v4.master just before the end head tag, </HEAD> :

<script type="text/javascript" src="/SiteAssets/initNoPresence.js"></script>

Done!

Category: SharePoint 2010

Published: 4/27/2012 8:15 PM

More SharePoint at Rackspace

Thomas.Resing — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:19:18 GMT

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More for me. More for them. More for you.

I’m joining the incredibly talented, infamously humorous, infinitely engaging SharePoint team at Rackspace.

Jeff Deverter and company have hosted the San Antonio SharePoint User Group monthly meetings at Rackspace for a couple years now and I’ve gotten to know a lot of their smart admins. With the recent addition of the SharePoint911 crew the level of SharePoint talent at Rackspace exploded overnight.

If you attend conferences that include SharePoint content, it’s hard not to run into the 6 MVPs formerly of SharePoint911, now Rackspace. I got Shane and Todd to pause during TechEd 2010 for a picture with me (above) where their SharePoint 2010 Administration book was the most popular of the show. Their book sold out all copies in the Microsoft Bookstore on the 1st day of the conference.

I’ll continue to do SharePoint consulting for Rackspace on Shane’s team. And I’ll most likely pursue the evolution of MCM called the MCSM. But one of the things I’m most excited about is the opportunity to do more community events, speaking and writing about SharePoint. Look for a new book from me when Wave 15 hits, a move of TomResing.com to the Rackspace Cloud and a SharePoint Saturday San Antonio announcement coming soon.

Service Application Reading

Thomas.Resing — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:43:54 GMT

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Healthy service applications are very important to a SharePoint 2010 Farm. When SharePoint 2010 was new, there was a lot of attention paid to them. The shift from the Shared Service Providers of SharePoint 2007 and earlier to the new model for 2010 was significant, both understanding the underlying concepts and the effects the shift had on the platform.

Whether you are just creating your first SharePoint 2010 Farm, maintaining an existing Farm or refreshing your server application chops, I found a good series of articles from the past that can help you get up to speed

A good collection of short articles from Spence

I’ve been a big fan of Spencer Harbar’s blog going back most of 7 years to the Microsoft Content Management Server days. After having attended the Microsoft Certified Master course where Spence teaches a lot, I’ve given it even more attention.

I recommend that anyone responsible for setting up a reliable SharePoint 2010 Farm read the following articles to get up to speed or review Service Application concepts. They are all short, but very good references.

· SharePoint Server 2010 Worker Processes

· More on SharePoint 2010 Application Pools

· In a Nutshell: SharePoint 2010 Service Applications

· SharePoint 2010: Service Applications Part One: Model Overview

Category: Administration

Published: 4/9/2012 12:43 PM

Elevating Privileges in SharePoint Code

Thomas.Resing — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:56:13 GMT

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Impersonation leads to Permission Trimming

SharePoint uses ASP.Net impersonation to personalize the platform based on the current authorized user. SharePoint objects are aware of the user’s identity and many parts of SharePoint take advantage of this ability. For example, when you get the lists in a site through the API, you only see the ones the current user has access to. Permission trimming, as similar functions in SharePoint are often referred, is a major convenience to the end user and a feature of SharePoint that many rely on.

Experienced in ASP.Net but not Impersonation

For many developers coming from backgrounds in ASP.Net projects where impersonation is not used, this can be very confusing. For example, many developers new to SharePoint, including myself, were surprised the first time they realized that opening a connection to a database was denied because the connection was access as the end user, not the application pool account. The natural first reaction is “Who moved my cheese? How do I get back to normal?” Where normal is the previous normal of ASP.Net web applications not using impersonation. However, as MSDN cautions, running with impersonation is something you should get used to when using Sharepoint:

If you use Windows authentication and your code calls the SharePoint object model from an Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process, the request must impersonate the calling user’s identity. SharePoint Foundation configures ASP.NET to impersonate the calling user automatically, but your code may work unexpectedly, or fail, if you suspend impersonation

Quoted from <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spsite.aspx>

When to RunWithElevatedPrivileges, When not to

Often, failing to suspend impersonation in the way MSDN cautions about, the next step a developer will take to “solve the problem” of impersonation is to use a SharePoint API call named SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges.

RunWithElevatedPrivileges is a great way to solve the database connection problem, but often it can become somewhat of a Pandora’s box. It can become a go-to tool for every permission error encountered in SharePoint code. However, there are some issues that can occur with overuse of this style of programming, not least of which is that you lose some core SharePoint functionality inherent with impersonating the user.

A StackOverflow discussion about the pitfalls of RunWithElevatedPrivilges is a good summary and starting point for reading on the subject. Also, I’ve included below 3 good references for further reading on the topic.

Further Elevated Privileges Reading

These first two links below are from Daniel Larson, co-author of Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 published by Microsoft Press. I consider that one of the best books written about SharePoint Development and I’ve read it cover to cover more than once. The first post is a set of good general guidelines. The second is a more concrete implementation of impersonating using the SPSite constructor. The third link is by a .Net Developer Keith Dalby who is a former Microsoft employee and MVP. I don't use his approach, but I think some .Net Developers who are fond of recent changes in the .Net language would appreciate his take.

Best Practices for Elevated Privilege in SharePoint
1. http://daniellarson.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/best-practices-for-elevated-privilege-in-sharepoint

Elevated Privilege with SPSite
1. http://daniellarson.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/elevated-privilege-with-spsite

Elegant SPSite Elevation
1. http://solutionizing.net/2009/01/06/elegant-spsite-elevation/

Category: software development; SharePoint 2010

Published: 2/17/2012 12:56 PM

SharePoint Saturday Austin Slides

Thomas.Resing — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:10:59 GMT

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Thanks to all who attended my presentation at SharePoint Saturday Austin in January. As promised, here are the slides for your reference.

Integrate External Data with bcs #spsaustx
View more presentations from Thomas Resing.

Picture

Here's a picture from the event by Victor:

Category: events; Community

Published: 2/2/2012 5:03 PM

Cloudshare How-to 48-hour SharePoint Virtual Machines in the Cloud

Thomas.Resing — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:58:32 GMT

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I’ve blogged about SharePoint Development on Cloudshare in the past, see Some SharePoint Development Machine Options, but I thought I’d go through a screen-shot how-to so you can see how easy it is to get up and running with them.

First, browse the solution showcase, pictured below:

After choosing a pre-set environment of one to many vm’s, register for the trial account. I suggest trying the Microsoft Information Worker VM first because it has lots of great demos set up already.

After confirming you received their email to finish registration, your machines are already running in the cloud and ready for you to open in the remote desktop active X application direct from the browser.

Enjoy using Cloudshare for SharePoint Development and Testing. Let me know if this was helpful or needs work in the comments on http://www.tomresing.com

Published: 1/23/2012 9:58 AM

SharePoint for DBA’s Part II at SALSSA

Thomas.Resing — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:19:13 GMT

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Last night I presented SharePoint for DBA’s Part II to the San Antonio League of SQL Server Administrators.

Slides

The slides from the presentation are available for download and viewing on SlideShare.

Screencast of part of Demo 2

I recorded a screencast of one of the demos from the presentation.

Video Note: I recorded the video above because during the presentation I ran into an error which prevented the creation of the External List from the External Content Type and I wanted to show how the demo should have ended last night. More detail on the error I received and how to solve it is below.

No Finders Error Solution

While creating the external list I received the following error every time I tried to create the list. I also received various other errors which came from rushing trying to recover from this one I hadn’t seen before.

The error states “No Finders available in the View Group associated with the Specific Finder (Read Item) operation.” That alone wasn’t enough information for me to figure out what was wrong with my Read Item operation at first glance.

A quick search turned up the solution on MSDN Forums. “Try making sure that the columns in your Read List and Read Item Operations are the same.” This indeed is the key and it’s easy to reproduce the error condition once you have this tip.

To generate the error screenshot above, I just removed one column from my Read Item Operation so it didn’t match the list of columns in my Read List Operation and attempted to create a new External List from the External Content Type. Simply adding the same column back restores us from the error condition.

Reference

SharePoint for DBA’s Part II Slides,

http://slidesha.re/s4uBZ1

Connect a SharePoint List to a SQL Server Database,

http://youtu.be/PAo9LlT1X9s

…tasks that administrators can perform against SharePoint databases (SharePoint 2007)

http ://support.microsoft.com/kb/932744

Database maintenance for SharePoint Server 2010

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262731.aspx

Designing large lists and maximizing list performance (SharePoint Server 2010)

http ://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262813.aspx

Accessing External Data

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg620626

Category: Administration; SharePoint 2010; Community

Published: 11/17/2011 6:19 PM

SharePoint First Steps for Administrators and Developers

Thomas.Resing — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:31:53 GMT

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In late 2006, when I asked my mentor what I needed to do to get up to speed quickly on SharePoint for my first major SharePoint project, he had great advice that I only followed reluctantly. The mentor was Matthew McDermott. He told me to read more than 1000 pages of free documentation from Microsoft. And he told me to practice it and then re-read it and only then I would know the basics. At the time, it sounded crazy to me as an additional workload to my current projects. Only because I trusted Matt, believed in Microsoft’s new vision for the as of yet unreleased SharePoint 2007 at the time and wanted to deliver a quality first SharePoint project that I took his advice. And I couldn’t be happier that I made that leap.

Combined with the advice and mentorship of another great consultant, Tom Stewart, I was ready for learning what I needed to lead a project on this new platform. With Tom, I had already gained experience on Microsoft Content Management Server. I had become comfortable with the Content Management concept of page layouts and publishing pages that applied in SharePoint with the 2007 release. I also had worked on SharePoint web parts before. But I hadn’t really grasped the power of the platform before I set off to really understand how it is installed and configured. What follows is my advice for new SharePoint installers based on the advice I received when I was new. I’ve updated it to SharePoint 2010, but keep in mind there have already been multiple releases of the books below during the current product’s life and there may be more.

The Downloadable Books

There is so much Downloadable book content for SharePoint Server 2010 now compared to before. I noticed they even have many of the downloadable books for sale on Amazon now, which isn’t a bad option. I normally print some of the books out, but it is a lot of pages. It might cost as much in ink and paper as the cost to buy it preprinted and bound on Amazon.

The list of books, posters and white papers is on TechNet:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262788.aspx

Of those, I generally recommend reading the two planning guides cover to cover, about 800 pages and the deployment guide, another 380 pages.

Planning for sites and solutions, Part 1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=196150)
Planning for sites and solutions, Part 2 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=208024
Downloadable book: Deployment guide for SharePoint Server 2010 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=196222)

Your First Install

For a first time install of SharePoint, I recommend printing out the deployment guide and following it step by step, making notes on the pages where you might make changes in a future installation. After installing and configuring SharePoint a few times using the deployment guide and after reading the planning guide, you should have a good grasp on most of the backend features of SharePoint. You might even be ready to pass a Microsoft Certification for IT Pros.

For Developers and Admins?

Whether your goal is to move more into the administrator or developer side of SharePoint, following the steps above is a good start. The IT Professional side of SharePoint deals with server installs, configuration and maintenance. The Developer side of SharePoint involves writing custom solutions that are deployed to a SharePoint Server. However, as a SharePoint Developer, you often are best served by installing and configuring your own development environment to mirror the production server. The better you grasp the concepts introduced in the above books, the better you will be able to control the fate of your development server.

Category: SharePoint 2010; Administration

Published: 11/8/2011 8:31 AM

SharePoint Weekly, Andrew Connell and MVVM

Thomas.Resing — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:32:50 GMT

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I just noticed on the SharePoint Weekly Newsletter from Nick Swan that Andrew Connell has a new blog series on SharePoint, Silverlight and MVVM. Developers love design patterns and just the thought of MVVM takes me back to my one of my favorite Computer Science classes on Java 15 years ago.

If you’re not familiar with Andrew, you should check out some of his stuff. He’s one of my favorite SharePoint Development Authors and Presenters and having shared a few pints with him, I can say he’s a nice guy. I’ve been reading his blog posts and books since the Microsoft Content Management Server days before SharePoint 2007 when he was one of about two reliable sources I found on the product. One of his latest books is Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010 which I’ve only skimmed but this one he co-authored looks to be the premier SharePoint 2010 dev book from MS Press.

If you haven’t heard of SharePoint Weekly, check it out here: http://www.sharepointweekly.com/

Category: SharePoint 2010; software development

Published: 11/3/2011 10:32 AM

FBA Claims Super User Halloween Gotcha

Thomas.Resing — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:25:30 GMT

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I’ve been working with Claims Authentication a lot recently and I’m still tripped up by some of the basics, it would appear. Yesterday, on Halloween, I received an access denied error on my web application after configuring it for Forms Based Authentication. I had previously migrated it to windows claims, but this was my first try moving an existing web application from windows claims to FBA Claims.

The error in the ULS was misleading:

Cannot get Role Manager with name aspnetsqlroleprovider. The role manager for this process was not properly configured. You must configure the role manager in the .config file for every SharePoint process.

After searching all my web.config files for the word aspnetsqlroleprovider I realized I was on a wild goose chase. The culprit was the “Claims Super User Settings” as I will phrase it. I’d dealt with it before when moving the same web application from windows integrated to window claims authentication, but thought I’d properly addressed it the second time around until I got this error.

If you receive an access denied after changing claims authentication settings, take a minute to re-read Configure object cache user accounts in the TechNet SharePoint 2010 Server Operations section. In the case of my FBA implementation, I tried the PowerShell method first, but still received the error afterwards. It wasn’t until I configured the User Policy as described in the reference above that resolved the error.

Claims References

Configure object cache user accounts, Microsoft TechNet, Published: June 17, 2010
Migrate from classic-mode to claims-based authentication (SharePoint Server 2010), Microsoft TechNet, Published: October 14, 2010
Setting up FBA Claims in SharePoint 2010 with Active Directory Membership Provider, Sridhar's blog [MSFT SharePoint Support Engineer], January 7, 2010

Category: powershell; SharePoint 2010; Administration

Published: 11/1/2011 5:25 PM

SharePoint for DBAs Part 1 at SALSSA

Thomas.Resing — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:34:32 GMT

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Last night I presented a session titled SharePoint for DBAs Part 1 at the San Antonio League of SQL Server Administrators (www.SALSSA.com). There was a great group of 10 Microsoft SQL Professionals attending who gave me great feedback and interaction during and after the presentation. I've agreed to do a follow up, Part 2, sometime in the future.

Most of the presentation was demo which I may record seperately and upload to YouTube, but the slides are available from Slide Share now.

SharePoint for DBAs Part 1

View more presentations from Thomas Resing.

Category: Administration; Community; events

Published: 10/20/2011 4:34 AM

Best SharePoint Conference Ever! #SPC11

Thomas.Resing — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:31:33 GMT

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Walking around Disneyland with my friend Michael Doyle last night, I said to him, “Could this day get any better?” and I think we really did both feel that way. Michael has had two books published within weeks of each other, one of them Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out we were co-authors on. We had a book signing event, heard great sessions, I passed another certification test, met lots of old friends and new ones and spent 4 hours in Disneyland.

Today was a great day! I posted some photos from the conference so far to a public photo album on Facebook.

Here’s a picture with my co-authors and editor at the book signing and giveaway:

Category: events

Published: 10/5/2011 10:31 AM

Want a review copy of SharePoint Foundation Inside Out?

Thomas.Resing — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:03:44 GMT

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#SPC11 - Are you a blogger? Would you like a free copy of the newest book on SharePoint from Microsoft Press? Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out which I am a co-author on will be available through the O’Reilly Blogger Review program in the next week or two.

My co-authors, the editors, publishers and I would love to hear what you think about our new book!

If you’re not familiar with the program, O’Reilly provides select titles of recent book titles available to bloggers willing to review the books they choose to receive. O’Reilly publishes Microsoft Press titles through a recent partnership with Microsoft and manages this blogger review program. I’ve been a big fan of O’Reilly since I bought the first edition of Java in a Nutshell back in 1996.

Category: Books

Published: 10/1/2011 10:03 AM

Walking and Running around the Anaheim Convention Center

Thomas.Resing — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:11:11 GMT

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For #SPC11 conference attendees looking to get some fresh air and exercise while not in sessions at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011, October 3rd-6th, there is some good news. The SPRunners group is back and active on Facebook this go-around. Join the open group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/sprunners/

Also, I found some good maps of the Conference Center Area. If you’re looking for the entrance to the conference center, I believe you’ll find the best, and maybe only, entrance on the following map at the place marked Lobby. You can also see how close together the Marriott, Hilton, Clarion and Sheraton Hotels are together on the Convention Center Way leading up to the Conference Center.

The Disney Fitness Map shows some paths going through the resort area that aren’t on the main streets. That should be nice for walking or running, I’m guessing.

Category: events

Published: 10/1/2011 3:11 PM

Meet me at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference

Thomas.Resing — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:14:01 GMT

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#SPC11 - I’ll be at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference October 3-6, 2011 at the Anaheim Convention Center and the party Tuesday night across the street at Disneyland. If you see me at the conference or the park, don’t be afraid to ask me to sign your copy of my new book, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out.

If you’re looking for a copy of the book, there will be multiple giveaways and, I’m not sure, but it might be available at the conference book store.

Look for a little more activity than usual on this blog this week with the official release of the book and coverage from the conference. I’ll also be tweeting at @resing.

Book giveaway details

My co-author Errin O’Connor will be signing and giving away 250 copies at the EPC Group Booth at the following times:

Sun 10/2, 7pm
Mon 10/3 & Tues 10/4,12:30-1:30pm
Wed 10/5, 6:30pm

Microsoft Press will have a limited number of copies to give away at their booth. During the giveaway, you can meet me and my co-authors, Penelope Coventry, Jonathan Lightfoot, Troy Lanpier and Michael Doyle and get your copy signed.

The Microsoft Press giveaway will be at:

Tuesday, 3PM

Category: Books; events

Published: 10/1/2011 10:14 AM

My take on SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out

Thomas.Resing — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:51:56 GMT

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Follow @Resing for background on the book

I use twitter with the name @resing and I am actively promoting the book on twitter and on my blog http://tomresing.com/blog

Why I contributed to this book

I wrote this book because my friends and family want to know more about what I do in my day job. So much of my time is spent with the technical details behind the scenes of great SharePoint deployments, but it’s the people looking at that from the other side that really matter. If this book can help explain what people can do with the tools I can help put in front of them, it will make my technical work that much more rewarding.

Why this book is important

This book is important because SharePoint is growing so fast and people want to know what it is and what they can do with it. This product is Microsoft’s fastest growing server based product ever. And that’s saying a lot considering how many people use Exchange for email through the Outlook client. Sooner or later, your organization will give you access to a SharePoint server if they haven’t already. And soon after that, you may be asked to use a SharePoint site to help coordinate project work or provide information to your team. SharePoint’s growing fast and this book will help those who want to use it to get their ideas out there and hear back from those that are looking for their creative work.

The most important takeaway

After reading this book, you will be better prepared for the challenges you might face as you dig deeper into SharePoint. For example, if you know how to create a list in SharePoint and how to create a worksheet in Excel, you will learn how to show the SharePoint list in Excel. It’s not hard to do, but the first time you do it, it helps to have this handy reference.

Who will read this book

So many people are familiar with Microsoft tools for writing, presenting and calculating, but haven’t dug deep into SharePoint yet. I have so many people ask me “What is SharePoint?” or even “Do I have SharePoint?” And these are people that use complimentary Microsoft products like Outlook, Word and Excel every day. This book is for them.

The book’s importance preparing readers for the future

SharePoint is not going away any time soon. Microsoft’s past investments in this platform have been huge and they are only getting bigger. With the increased investment in the cloud hosted version of SharePoint Online in Office 365, the audience for this collaboration product has the potential to grow even faster next year. As the world moves further into sharing information with friends, family and co-workers on the web, this book will help you take advantage of Microsoft’s best tool for doing just that.

Category: Books

Published: 10/1/2011 9:51 AM

SharePoint Mapping Mashups Reprised

Thomas.Resing — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:14:14 GMT

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Last night, I gave the Mapping Mashups in SharePoint 2010 presentation to the San Antonio SharePoint User Group. Most of the presentation was demo and I performed the demo steps live on a new site I created under sasug.net at http://sasug.net/sasug

Pictured above is a screenshot of the demo site after I added some detail. You can find all the demos live on the site, the code I used, the presentation slide deck and even a picture taken of the audience while I gave the demo.

When I gave a similar presentation 2 weeks ago to the Microsoft Certified Master in SharePoint Community, I was excited to see how quickly they were able to add their city information from all over the world from the first demo while I gave the other 2 demos. That gave me a very interesting result from Demo 3, show all the contacts on a map as shown below. Link through for the live page on tomresing.com

I drew inspiration, and code from many places over the year starting with Greg Chan’s Post on the SharePoint Designer Team Blog which Jeff Deverter originally turned me on to. And most recently, Mark Rackley’s “Using Google Maps to Populate an Address…” which I borrowed a lot of code from for the first demo. In the past, I’ve detailed some of the steps to add maps to your SharePoint site in previous posts. What I did last night was very similar in the Content Editor Web Part and Data Form Web Part pieces. The only difference was the updated code I used for filling the form and using the newest Google Maps API that doesn’t require a key.

Category: Maps; SharePoint 2010; events

Published: 9/28/2011 4:14 AM

SQL Master Data Services at SALSSA

Thomas.Resing — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:15:14 GMT

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I attended a San Antonio League of SQL Server Administrators (SALSSA) meeting last night. The presentation was on SQL Server Master Data Services which are a feature of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, but kind of hidden.

The presenter, Garrett Edmondson, specializes in Business Intelligence using the Kimball Methodology and works for a small group doing R&D for Tribune in San Antonio.

It was clear from his presentation that there is one book on MDS and it’s a must read if you want to do a project with it.

Another key takeaway is that the Master Data Services Team Blog is very important. For example, Garrett recommended installing using the MSI included in Service Pack 1 Cumulative Update 2 released August 16th, 2011. The MDS Team blog has step by step instructions for installing that way or through the RTM bits, but Garrett recommends against using the RTM bits.

Other Meeting Notes

New Horizons New Space

The new extension for New Horizons San Antonio is very nice. It’s just past Vance Jackson on the 410 Access Road going west in a free standing building between Academy Sports and Sugars. Parking and entrance are much more convenient than the location off I-10 which is in a tall building with a garage. Also, I like that the space is newly built out with new chairs and desks. I wish the project was brighter and larger, though. It would make reading slides and code much easier.

SQL Saturday

SALSSA organizer Jim Steiner made sure to point out the upcoming SQL Saturday planned for October 1st in Austin. Jim said they will have some great quality speakers in their 25 free sessions. Lunch is $10. Organized by Wes Brown, @wesbrownsql on Twitter

Windows 8 Tablets Are Live Today

Thomas.Resing — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:42:00 GMT

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Update 8PM: The developer preview link is live and appears to be working. My 3.8GB download says it will be done in 25 minutes. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/

This news has the potential to change life as a Microsoft oriented Software Developer fairly quickly.

Windows 8 Tablets are live, at least 5000 or so given away at Microsoft's Build Conference.
Engadget has one of these Samsung Slate Devices and recorded a video using one:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/13/windows-8-for-tablets-hands-on-preview/

They did a full hands on review of the same tablet running Windows 7 a couple weeks back. It will be on sale this month with Win7 for a little more than $1K:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/31/samsungs-series-7-slate-pc-hands-on/

The Windows 8 Developer Preview will be available for public download today, so theoritcally you could buy one of these Samsung Slates at the end of the month and have your own Windows 8 Tablet running before Halloween.
http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/windows-8-developer-preview-build-today-140553

Computerworld puts the number of attendees at BUILD at 5000, not 1000 like I guessed at first:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219971/5_000_Microsoft_developers_get_Samsung_preview_tablets

BUILD attendees take home Samsung Windows Developer Preview PC/slate – istartedsomething

Category: software development

Published: 9/13/2011 2:42 PM

Map your tweets with Creepy

Thomas.Resing — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:10:51 GMT

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Since early 2010, I’ve visited about 10 states and a few different cities in Texas. Do you find it creepy that people can tell that about me from my twitter account? Apparently the author of the program named “Creepy” does based on his name for the app that generated the picture above. Personally, I find it pretty cool that I can map out all the places from which I’ve shared information on twitter.

If you’ve attended my Mapping Mashups in SharePoint Presentation or read my blog series on the same, you’re probably not surprised in my interest in maps or my interest in sharing with others.

What do you think? Is this creepy?

If you want to see your own tweets on a map or even someone else’s, download creepy from ilektrojohn.github.com/creepy, install it on your linux or Windows PC and enter a twitter handle to generate a map like above.

It’s a little buggy. I clicked the geolocate target about a dozen times and received an error each time. The first time took the longest and got about 50 tweets. Another time it loaded my tweets back to March 2010, but it hasn’t been able to get all my tweets yet or my flickr photos. If it did, you’d see dots in Seattle, Las Vegas and Germany.

Category: Maps

Published: 8/19/2011 4:10 PM

SharePoint Development Path from 2007 to 2010

Thomas.Resing — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:31:52 GMT

Body:

Update 6/2: Jeff Deverter posted a 13 minute interview with me on SharePoint Development recorded before the presentation.

Update 7/3: In the video above, Jeff asked when to look for the new updates to the SDK and Friday the SharePoint Product Team announced the 2nd big update since initially publishing the Developer Guidance last July. In the same announcements was a link to the new SharePoint 2010 Development Video Center containing two videos from fellow MCM Vesa Juvonen who is also an MCM Instructor. Vesa gives a 1 hour 25 minute presentation on Upgrading Code from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and he has great experience as a team lead at MCS Finland.

I really enjoyed presenting this morning at SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast Tour in San Antonio today. I had a great group of close to 20 in the session with good questions. Here are my slides with the 2007 VSeWSS Demo Screenshots and links to where to download the tools.

I’m looking forward to my second session on connecting external data to SharePoint coming up later this afternoon.

Here’s a view of the lazy river ending just outside the sessions at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort

Category: events; software development

Published: 5/25/2011 12:31 PM

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Some SharePoint Development Machine Options

Thomas.Resing — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:02:40 GMT

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It’s almost a year after release of SharePoint 2010 and momentum is still building around the platform. If you’ve worked with previous versions, but are just coming around to 2010 today, you’ve got some great options for getting up to speed quickly. If you’re a developer, you probably need more than the average SharePoint professional

Do you want to build on bare metal, in VMWare, HyperV or use the cloud? The quickest way anymore is to use cloudshare.com. I’ll make that Option 1:

Check out the VMs you can start instantly at http://www.cloudshare.com/solutions/sharepoint-development-environment.aspx I'm using the $50/month plan for a lot of my development and testing, but I also use VMWare.
There's a decent 20 page walkthrough on MSDN if you want to go the manual way: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx Keep in mind you need a 64bit host and as much memory as possible. My 6GB laptop with 4 GB's assigned to the VM creeps along slowly, especially with Visual Studio running. The 12GB I have on my desktop makes a much better host.
You can also download the preconfigured IW VM from Microsoft. It has everything turned on with Office, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio installed. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21099

By default this VM will run in Hyper-V. You’ve got to jump through some hoops to get it to run in VMWare, but it’s not impossible. Of course there’s always CloudShare’s On Demand instance to fall back too, Option 1 above.

Category: SharePoint 2010; software development

Published: 6/27/2011 3:02 PM

User Profile Property and Property Mapping Troubleshooting

Thomas.Resing — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 02:12:55 GMT

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Working with a remote server today, I thought it would be helpful to see some information about the User Profile Properties without being able to see the server. Rather than ask the on site administrator for a bunch of screen shots, I decided to use PowerShell and the SharePoint API.

The User Profile Store and a Deprecated Method

The first sample code I came across used the deprecated method UserProfileConfigManager.GetProperties. Using this carry over from SharePoint 2007, you can still get details on the properties in SharePoint 2010, but it’s not guaranteed to be available in SharePoint vNext, so it’s best to move on to the new UserProfiles.ProfileSubtypeManager and the corresponding ProfileSubtypePropertyManager. It took more than a few minutes for me to walk through the MSDN docs on this, so I thought I’d share the short script with you. The following script will retrieve the properties of a SharePoint Server 2010 farm with User Profile Service Application configured to provide services for the site at the address http://portal.tomresing.local.

Sample Script 1

#ProfileSubtypeManager replaces GetProperties() for 2010
Add-Type -Path "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\isapi\microsoft.office.server.dll"
$siteUrl = http://portal.tomresing.local
$site = Get-SPSite $siteUrl
$context = Get-SPServiceContext $site
$ProfileSubtypeManager = [Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileSubtypeManager]::Get($context)
$ProfileSubtypeManager.GetSubtypesForProfileType(1)[0].Properties
$site.Dispose()

Sample Script 1 Example Output

The output of the first script will be many sets of the list of property details like the details for the Property named Id below. The names and values in the set of details are easy to match to what you see in the User Profile Service Management page in Central Administration for User Profile Management.

ProfileName         : UserProfile
IsSection           : False
DisplayName         : Id
IsAlias             : False
AllowPolicyOverride : False
IsRequired          : True
IsUserEditable      : False
IsAdminEditable     : False
IsImported          : False
DefaultPrivacy      : Public
UserOverridePrivacy : False
PrivacyPolicy       : Mandatory
DisplayOrder        : 1
CoreProperty        : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.CoreProperty
TypeProperty        : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileTypeProperty
IsUpgrade           : False
IsUpgradePrivate    : False

The User Profile Property Mappings

You can use this second script to send to the screen all of the property mappings and their details from a site at the address http://portal.tomresing.local which a User Profile Connection named tomresing.local.

Sample Script 2

Add-Type -Path "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\isapi\microsoft.office.server.dll"
$siteUrl = "http://portal.tomresing.local"
$site = Get-SPSite $siteUrl
$context = Get-SPServiceContext $site
$upConfigManager = New-Object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigManager($context)
$connectionManager = $upConfigManager.ConnectionManager
$connection = $connectionManager["tomresing.local"]
$pmc = $connection.PropertyMapping
$pmc.GetEnumerator()
$site.Dispose()

Sample Script 2 Example Output

The output of the script will be one set of the property details for each mapping that exists in your connection. The following example shows the details for Active Directory Properties named wWWHomePage and sAMAccountName.

PropertyMapCollection          : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.PropertyM
                                 apCollection
IsImport                       : True
IsExport                       : False
ProfileProperty                : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileTy
                                 peProperty
DataSourcePropertyName         : wWWHomePage
OriginalDataSourcePropertyName : wWWHomePage
AssociationName                : 
Connection                     : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ActiveDir
                                 ectoryConnection

PropertyMapCollection          : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.PropertyM
                                 apCollection
IsImport                       : True
IsExport                       : False
ProfileProperty                : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ProfileTy
                                 peProperty
DataSourcePropertyName         : sAMAccountName
OriginalDataSourcePropertyName : sAMAccountName
AssociationName                : 
Connection                     : Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ActiveDir
                                 ectoryConnection

Conclusion

PowerShell makes it easy to view information about your User Profile Store and it’s mappings using the SharePoint SDK. Watch out for methods marked obsolete in the SDK, however. These methods should be avoided in new code because they may not be available in SharePoint vNext.

Note

If you’re doing this you may get an exception "No User Profile Application available to service the request. Contact your farm administrator." It’s a permissions issue you can fix in Manage Service Applications in Central Administration. MCM Instructor Steve Peshka explains on his blog.

Category: powershell; SharePoint 2010; Administration

Published: 6/6/2011 9:12 PM

SharePoint Conference 2011 is going to Disneyland

Thomas.Resing — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 01:54:46 GMT

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I wonder how many people caught the Live Chat on the Microsoft SharePoint Team’s Facebook page today. I missed the chat but noticed in the transcript some interesting details. First of all, Microsoft is renting Disneyland for a SharePoint Conference Party on the Tuesday night of the event. Only makes sense being in Anaheim, right?

Other than that, I didn’t see much new in the chat. Eric kind of dodged a question by Rick Taylor about mobile, one about Skype and another about Windows 8. He confirmed Office 365 will have Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and PowerPivot at an unannounced date in the future and that SharePoint’s Service Pack 1 will be released at the end of June.

Category: events; Community

Published: 6/2/2011 8:54 PM

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Presenting SharePoint Overview to AITP San Antonio Tonight

Thomas.Resing — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:39:06 GMT

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I’m excited to be presenting to the San Antonio Chapter of the Association of Internet Technology Professionals (AITP) tonight. I love their mission of supporting students through scholarships and student chapters.

I will be presenting a quick demo of SharePoint 2010’s new editing features and then Alex Holcombe will follow up with some of his great SharePoint demos from AIS past work.

Here are some meeting details from the organizer:

The meeting will be at Matamoros Restaurant Y Cantina 12844 W IH10 and DeZavala (MapQuest: http://bit.ly/bFc6PM) starting with the networking mixer/happy hour at 5:30 pm, dinner at 6:30 and the program starting at 7:15pm.

Prices:
$20 members with reservations, $25 non-members and members without reservations, $15 for AITP student members and let us know if you have any special meal requests.

Simply fill out our RSVP form (http://bit.ly/9WqoQX) to let us know that you are coming.

Category: events; Community

Published: 5/18/2011 12:39 PM

Tom Resing's SharePoint 2010 Blog: Posts

Removing the Name ActiveX on 2010 the 2007 way

Aside

KB OG

No Server Access Steps

Do: use the same script as the KB

Do: Save the script to file named initNoPresence.js

Don’t: save it to the SharePoint Root, put it somewhere like the SiteAssets folder

Do: insert the following link in your v4.master just before the end head tag, </HEAD> :

Done!

More SharePoint at Rackspace

Read more about SharePoint + Rackspace

Service Application Reading

A good collection of short articles from Spence

Elevating Privileges in SharePoint Code

Impersonation leads to Permission Trimming

Experienced in ASP.Net but not Impersonation

When to RunWithElevatedPrivileges, When not to

Further Elevated Privileges Reading

SharePoint Saturday Austin Slides

Cloudshare How-to 48-hour SharePoint Virtual Machines in the Cloud

First, browse the solution showcase, pictured below:

After choosing a pre-set environment of one to many vm’s, register for the trial account. I suggest trying the Microsoft Information Worker VM first because it has lots of great demos set up already.

After confirming you received their email to finish registration, your machines are already running in the cloud and ready for you to open in the remote desktop active X application direct from the browser.

SharePoint for DBA’s Part II at SALSSA

Slides

Screencast of part of Demo 2

No Finders Error Solution

Reference

SharePoint First Steps for Administrators and Developers

The Downloadable Books

Your First Install

For Developers and Admins?

SharePoint Weekly, Andrew Connell and MVVM

FBA Claims Super User Halloween Gotcha

Claims References

SharePoint for DBAs Part 1 at SALSSA

Best SharePoint Conference Ever! #SPC11

Want a review copy of SharePoint Foundation Inside Out?

Walking and Running around the Anaheim Convention Center

Meet me at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference

Book giveaway details

My take on SharePoint Foundation 2010 Inside Out

Follow @Resing for background on the book

Why I contributed to this book

Why this book is important

The most important takeaway

Who will read this book

The book’s importance preparing readers for the future

SharePoint Mapping Mashups Reprised

SQL Master Data Services at SALSSA

Other Meeting Notes

New Horizons New Space

SQL Saturday

Links

Windows 8 Tablets Are Live Today

More

Map your tweets with Creepy

SharePoint Development Path from 2007 to 2010

Some SharePoint Development Machine Options

User Profile Property and Property Mapping Troubleshooting

The User Profile Store and a Deprecated Method

Sample Script 1

Sample Script 1 Example Output

The User Profile Property Mappings

Sample Script 2

Sample Script 2 Example Output

Conclusion

Note

SharePoint Conference 2011 is going to Disneyland

Presenting SharePoint Overview to AITP San Antonio Tonight