Veera's SharePoint Blog

Display the Quick Launch in a SharePoint 2007/2010 Web Part /Publishing page

2012-05-01T17:17:00.000-05:00

Many thanks to Christophe for a wonderful script to display quick launch in a web part page (original post/source post). I have re-written/adjusted Christophe’s code to work around issues with SharePoint 2010 upgrade. The current code works only in SharePoint 2010. I made some changes to the code to make it workable in SharePoint 2007 and 2010 pages. So, the same code works seamlessly after SharePoint 2010 upgrade. I have also simplified the code to easily understandable and to use across the site collection with some minor tweaks.

Here is the updated code:

Copy the below mentioned code into a notepad and save the file as DisplayQuickLaunch.js file. Upload the JS file your site collection level scripts/documents library.

function DisplayQuickLaunch()
{
 //Check for SharePoint Version
 var QuickLaunch =""; 
 if (typeof _fV4UI == "undefined") 
 {
  QuickLaunch = "LeftNavigationAreaCell";
 }
 else
 {
  QuickLaunch = "ctl00_PlaceHolderLeftNavBar_QuickLaunchNavigationManager";
 }
 
 var placeholder = document.getElementById(QuickLaunch);
 var quicklaunchmenu = null;
 var SourcePage = document.getElementById("SourcePage"); 
 try {
    if(SourcePage.contentDocument)
       // Firefox, Opera
 
       {quicklaunchmenu = SourcePage.contentDocument.getElementById(QuickLaunch) ;}
    else if(SourcePage.contentWindow)
       // Internet Explorer
 
       {quicklaunchmenu = SourcePage.contentWindow.document.getElementById(QuickLaunch) ;}
    else if(SourcePage.document)
       // Others?
 
       {quicklaunchmenu = SourcePage.document.getElementById(QuickLaunch) ;}
 }
 catch(err) { alert ("Loading failed");}
 placeholder.innerHTML = quicklaunchmenu.innerHTML;
}

Once you are done with the upload, copy the below mentioned code into to a content editor web part in SharePoint 2007 or HTML Form web part in SharePoint 2010. Make sure to update site URL and JS file path.


<iframe id="SourcePage" onload="DisplayQuickLaunch()" src="http://[Your Site]/default.aspx" style="display: none;"></iframe>

<script src="https//[Your JS file path]/DisplayQuickLaunch.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>

Hope this helps.

SharePoint Document library Versioning and Recommended Practices

2011-08-16T23:21:00.017-05:00

Based on a discussion with my colleague about SharePoint document library versioning, I thought of writing a blog post on SharePoint versioning recommended practices. By default, version history is turned off on document libraries. My own recommended practice is turn on versioning and limit the versions to 3 major and 3 minor versions with option to create major and minor versions. However, limiting the versions completely depends on the business requirements as well. Some business users need to keep 5 to 10 different versions based on their work strategy.

ü Turn on Versioning with create major and minor (draft) versions

ü Limit the versions to 3 major and 3 minor

ü Enable require checkout functionality

Versioning is a great feature of SharePoint. We can easily restore the documents from earlier versions in case of any data loss. It provides a safety net in the event that a corrupted version gets saved and also you can track the changes (and see who made them) from version to version at a glance. This feature is not available with traditional Shared Drives. Users are used to rename the files with appended “_v1”, “_v2” etc. to maintain the versions in Shared Drives. So, I would definitely enable the versioning in SharePoint document libraries and limit the versions to 3 major and 3 minor versions.

Major and Minor Versions: Versions ending with a zero extension (.0) are major versions and versions ending with non-zero extensions are minor versions. Only major versions can be published. Additional permission levels can be configured for working with minor versions (draft). In most scenarios, users who can edit major versions are also allowed to edit minor versions, but read-only users can only view major versions/published documents.

Why do I need to limit versions to 3 major and 3 minor versions?

By default, SharePoint keeps all versions in the document library once you enable the versioning (all versions size is counted towards the site collection quota), and these aren't bitwise differential versions, they're the full versions. I.e. each time you save the document, SharePoint stores as a separate copy of complete document in the database though you make a small change. Just imagine If you have a 100 MB presentation with 20 different versions (Around 2 GB of storage capacity). With large documents, even a small but active library can eat up your database in a hurry. If you have a limited site collection storage capacity, this is going to be a big issue to store more number of documents as database reaches it max storage capacity very soon. So, restrict at max 3 major and 3 minor versions at any point in time in the document library.

If you forget to set the limitation, there is no way from SharePoint out-of-the-box UI to delete specific versions form document version history. Either you have to remove/delete all versions or all minor versions. There is no way to delete specific published or minor versions in bulk.

To enable version history, follow the below mentioned steps:

v Navigate to your SharePoint document library

v Select document library settings

v In the settings page, under General Settings section, click Versioning Settings

v Check the checkbox “Create major and minor (draft) versions” option

v And, check the checkboxes to keep 3 major and 3 minor versions

SharePoint 2007: Single Document library vs. Multiple Document Libraries

2011-02-18T22:26:00.005-06:00

I often come across this question from customers or in forums about what is the best option to use a single document library vs. multiple document libraries in SharePoint site. However, choosing the best option is completely depends on the requirements to use single vs. multiple document libraries. There are different pros and cons associated using single vs. multiple document libraries.

What is a document library?

Document library is a location in a SharePoint site containing files of one or more content types. In SharePoint, by default everything is stored as content type. Example: By default, documents in a document library are stored with a “Document” content type. Document libraries are designed to manage and store related documents and lets users to create new documents of appropriate types.

Single Document Library :

· Use a single document library if you have a requirement to store all of your documents in a central repository. So, you can view all the documents at one place, i.e. using group by views. Example: By Region, Country, or Year etc.

o Permissions are not a constraint and would like to open the library for Read/Contribute permission users. i.e. Users of the document library can see all the documents irrespective of read write permissions.

o Require to group the documents based on specific category in a single view

Benefits for storing Documents in a Single Document Library:

· Users can easily add new documents or find existing documents with a single document library

· Document Management settings such as permissions, content versioning, and approval are applied at document library level

· Multiple views can be created to view the documents in different groups and views created by using the user interface are bound to a particular library

· Can attach Information Management policies, such as Retention, Auditing etc. to a document library level

Document Library Storage Limits:

· The Maximum recommended size of a library is 10,000,000 documents (yes, 10 million documents).

· Cannot apply unique document management settings such as require checkouts or versioning for specific documents.

· Adding multiple content types to a single document library creates more confusion for the users if those content types have multiple metadata columns. To remediate this issue, use fewer content types in the document library

· The performance of the views of content degrades when the number of items viewed exceeds 2,000 items. There are two recommendations from the Microsoft to remediate this issue.

o Organize the content in the document library into folders each containing 2,000 of fewer.

o Or, Create views that take advantage of indexed columns to return set of 2,000 or fewer in a view.

** I would recommend, creating views which returns 1,500 items instead of creating the folders yields the best performance. Folders cause lot of confusion, use metadata instead. **Folders are bad metadata is good!

Pros:

· Can view different categories of documents in a single view.

· Permissions can be managed centrally

· Single point of truth

· Less administrative over-head

Cons:

· Cannot manage the permissions based on views, i.e. if user has read access to the document library, he/she can view all documents in the document library irrespective of filters, views unless you break inheritance for individual documents or use folders to restrict permissions. However, using folders or setting item level permissions is not a best practice since this complicates the permissions maintenance in long run.

· Users may get over-whelmed with additional metadata fields need to be filled out

Multiple Document Libraries:

Use multiple document libraries if you have a requirement to restrict users from specific type of documents. Need to fill less metadata values by users. More are less like folders structure.

Pros:

· Easy to setup the libraries

· Less adjustment for user, as it is more like a folder structure

· Unique permissions can set on individual document libraries

Cons:

· More administrative over-ahead, as settings need to be configured on individual document libraries such as versioning, check-out, and information management policies etc.

· Cannot view all documents in a single view or by grouping

Managed Metadata and Hierarchical Dropdowns

2011-02-04T15:30:00.003-06:00

Cascading/Filtered dropdowns is the most required feature for SharePoint 2007 users which is not available by OOTB (out-of-the-box-). There are many third party custom features available to provide this functionality for cascading the metadata values from one to many levels. Most of you aware of Data cogs solution for the same. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not introduced the cascading functionality out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2010 as well. However, using managed metadata feature and metadata taxonomy /enhanced lookup columns, we can simulate the similar behavior. But this is only a workaround since user has to drill down the taxonomy tree view to select the appropriate cascaded/filtered value. In this article I am going explain the hierarchical functionality using managed metadata.

What is Managed Metadata?

Managed metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that you can define, and then use as attributes for items in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item and term sets are collection of related terms in SharePoint Server 2010.

SharePoint Server 2010 includes the Term Store Management Tool, which you can use to create and manage term sets. A user requires appropriate permissions to use the term store management tool.

Example: You can create a term set for Finance department which includes metadata related to Country, State, City and Financial Institution etc.

Using the above mentioned metadata taxonomy we can easily achieve the metadata hierarchical functionality in other way around by drilling down the tree view to appropriate metadata value.

To use the above mentioned taxonomy, create a new site column or list of type Managed Metadata. I am creating a list column to simulate the hierarchical functionality in a list.

Configure Cascading functionality with SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata service:

I have created a new list called “Finance Contacts” and added Country, State, City and Financial Institution columns to it. Using the managed metadata columns, I am able to filter lookup values.

Here are the steps to create cascaded lookups using SharePoint 2010 managed metadata taxonomy in a list.

1. Navigate to your SharePoint site and create a new custom list (In my example “Finance List”). Click List Settings on ribbon menu.

2. In the list settings page, under Columns section, click “Create Column”.

3. In the create column page, Type the name and description for the column and select the column type as “Managed Metadata”.

Note: Out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 doesn't support direct cascading functionality with lookup lists. If you select City, it won't change the "Financial Institution" values dynamically. User has to drill down to the texanomy to get the appropriate "Financial Institution" value. At least this functionalty is very much better as compared to MOSS 2007 lookups.

4. In the Term Set Settings section, select the Country Term set from the Finance Documents term store.

5. Optionally you can set Default Value for the “Country” field. This functionality is not available with OOTB (out-of-the-box) SharePoint 2007 lookups. With SharePoint “Default” option available in lookups and managed metadata columns as well.

6. Click Ok to complete the configuration.

7. Follow the same steps 2 through 6 to create other columns State, City and Financial Intuition.

Once the all columns are configured you can see the columns view as follows.

Now you can start adding the cascaded values by drilling down to the "Country" metadata texonomy (as mentioned in the above example "Financial Institution") to the SharePoint list.

**Note: Out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 doesn't support direct/dynamic cascading functionality. I.e. If you select "City" in the above example, it won't dynamically filter the values that applies to a particular City. User has to drill down to the "Financial Institution" manually from the texonomy (mentioned above) and select the appropriate filtered value. At least this is an improvement compared to MOSS 2007 lookups. User can easily drill down to the appropriate filtered metadta value using texonomy structure.

SharePoint 2010 Document Sets

2011-01-03T23:35:00.022-06:00

Microsoft introduced a new way to manage set of documents as a single object called Document Set. This single object can be used for a workflow, metadata, information management policies. In the earlier version of SharePoint (MOSS 2007) user doesn’t have an option to collectively manage related documents as a single object to associate a workflow, metadata or IM policies and download the documents as a single object. Managing individual documents is cumbersome if documents are used for same purpose and requires same metadata, workflow etc.

In SharePoint 2010, multiple documents can be organized into document sets. Document sets are new content types in SharePoint 2010. Each document set can hold multiple documents with share same metadata. The benefit is that, for example, Project documents, which could consist of several documents related to different phases can be bundled in a document set and passed off as a set to an approval workflow. Moreover since it is a content type in itself, metadata and IM policies can be attached at document set level.

Key Benefits of SharePoint 2010 Document Sets:

Ø Document sets can share the same metadata

Ø Workflows can be associated to a whole document set

Ø Manage permissions at Documents set level

(This avoids the use of folders for managing permissions for specific documents.)

Ø Versioning the document set instead of the separated documents

Ø Download all documents of a document set compressed into a ZIP file

Ø Customizable Welcome Page for all document sets

Here are the steps to create Document set in SharePoint 2010:

In order to use the Documents Sets feature, enable Document Sets Feature at Site collection level.

Navigate to your SharePoint 2010 site collection. Click Site Action and Site Settings.

Click Site Collection features.

Activate Document Sets Feature

As I mentioned in the above statements, documents sets are actually just content types as other document and list content types.

Create new documents Document Set content type with required metadata and workflow configurations
And, attach the new content type to SharePoint Document library

Create a new Document Set Content Type:

Navigate back to your SharePoint site. Click Site Actions -> Site Settings.

Under Galleries section, select Site Content Types.

Click Create.

Type Name and Description for the new Document Set content type and select the parent content type as “Document Set”.

Create necessary Document Set content types.

Make necessary Document Set settings according to your requirements using Document Set settings

Attach Document Set Content Types to Document Library:

Now enable “Allow Management of Content Types” on targeted document library and attach the Document Set content types.

Navigate to your document library. Click Library Settings.

Under General Settings, select Advanced Settings.

In Advanced Settings page, select "Allow Management of Content Types" as "Yes".

Now you can attach the document set content types to document library. To attach the content types, navigate back to settings page, under Content Types section, select "Add from existing site content types".

Select the available and required Document Set content types from site content types and click Ok to attach the content types to document library.

Now you see the Document Set content types under document library new button.

Here is the snapshot of complete document set:

Document set can hold multiple and multiple types of documents with common settings and properties. This functionality is a great addition with respect to content management features in SharePoint.

SharePoint 2010 Enhanced Lookup Columns

2010-12-12T23:41:00.000-06:00

SharePoint 2010 provides enhanced lookup functionality which is not available with SharePoint 2007 lookup fields. When creating a new lookup column type in SharePoint2010, site admin can set up some additional columns that can pull in multiple field values from the list that is being used as the lookup. Similar functionality can be achieved in SharePoint 2007 using Business Data column, but setting up Business Data column is not that user friendly or easy as Lookup columns.

Here is a screenshot of the configuration using a lookup column in Document Library:

When tagging/updating the metadata of documents or list items user will select only one tag and then additional columns are available in views and on view property pages.

Apart from the additional lookup fields, site admin can also enforce relationships so that it allows a cascade delete or restricts delete if a relationship still exists.

This feature is also new to SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2007 lookups, if anybody accidentally deletes the lookup value from the lookup list, all the lists and libraries where the lookup value is used are blanked out. Even admin doesn’t get a clue for the deleted metadata value until he/she finds it in Recycle Bin.

If there is a relationship associated with lookup and column, user cannot delete the lookup values from the lookup list. User get an error message when try to delete an item with relationship configured as Restrict delete.

How to Backup/Restore using STSADM command

2009-09-24T19:12:00.000-05:00

The STSADM command is used for backing up and restoring site collections. You can use this command to take the backup with full functionality and restore to new site collection. The way to backup and restore a SharePoint site using this command is:

Stsadm –o backup –url -filename
And then at a later date you can restore the site using
Stsadm –o restore –url -filename

Backup a Site Collection:

On your SharePoint server hit WINDOWS + R.
Type “cmd” and click OK.
In the cmd window navigate to the “C:\Program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin” directory.
Type stsadm -o backup -url “http://Server001/demo” -filename “C:\MyFirstBackup.bak” -overwrite
Press Enter

When the backup is completed it will now be sitting in your C:\ with the name MyFirstBackup.bak.

At this point you can copy the file to the other server, or just perform the restore on the same server by following the steps below.

Note before restoring ensure that the target site collection you are restoring onto is a BLANK site. This will allow you to avoid some potential issues with duplicate names and ID’s.

Restore a Site Collection:

On your SharePoint server hit WINDOWS + R.
Type “cmd” and click OK.
In the cmd window navigate to the “C:\Program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin” directory.
Type stsadm -o restore -url “http://Server001/Newsite” -filename “C:\MyFirstBackup.bak” -overwrite
Press Enter

When the restore is complete the site collection should now be replicated, or restored.

Note: STSADM is not user friendly with error messages. Check the Application Event Log. The message received in the command window may not be indicative of the true problem.

Optimizing SharePoint search using Managed Properties

2009-09-04T18:47:00.000-05:00

I would like to discuss about Optimizing SharePoint search using Managed Properties by configuring the Properties to appear in the Advanced Search. Here are the steps to create Managed Properties and configure it in MOSS 2007 Advanced Search.

1. Go to the central administration -> Shared Services

2. Under the Search Menu, click on Search Settings.

3. In the Configure Search Settings page, click on Metadata Property Mappings.

4. In the Metadata Property Mappings page, click on New Managed Property

5. Enter the Property Name and add the crawled properties that you want to add by clicking on the Add mappings button.

6. Click OK.

Once you have created the new custom managed property, go to the Advanced Search page.
1. Click on Site Settings and then on "Edit Page"
2. Click on Edit Menu of the Webpart and then Select "Modify Shared Web part"
In the Advanced Search Box Pane, click on the Properties Menu and then select the content in the Properties Text Box. In order that your Managed Properties appears in the Properties lists, you need to make changes in the XML file content.

The XML File in Properties has the following structure:

Find the string:
<PropertyDef Name="ModifiedBy" DataType="text"
DisplayName="Last Modified By"/>
Add the following String below it:
<PropertyDef Name="MyProperty" DataType="text" DisplayName="MyProperty"/>
MyProperty denotes the managed property that was created in Search Settings in the Shared Services.
Find the ResultType node:
<ResultType DisplayName="All Results" Name="default">
Add the following string below this:
<PropertyRef Name="MyProperty" />
Now you can click on Apply and OK to close the pane.

The property "MyProperty" will appear in the Property list box when All Results is selected.

SharePoint Maximum File Upload Size

2009-09-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

SharePoint 2007 by default allows a maximum file size of 50MB that can be uploaded into any document library. This might be too much as you might not want users downloading 50MB files over your LAN/WAN. To change the maximum file size, here is the approach:

Increase the maximum upload size:

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.
Under Virtual Server Configuration, click Configure virtual server settings. On the Virtual Server List page, click the virtual server that you want to change.
On the Virtual Server Settings page, under Virtual Server Management, click Virtual server general settings.
Under Maximum upload size, type the maximum file size in megabytes that you want, and then click OK. You can specify a maximum file size up to 2,047 megabytes.

If you increase the file size limit, your site might occassionally time out for users while they are uploading files. To accomodate this increase the default time out property for IIS. Here are the steps to increase the connection time-out settings:

Increase the connection time-out setting

By default, the IIS connection time-out setting is 120 seconds. To increase the connection time-out setting, follow these steps:

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
Right-click the virtual server that you want to configure, and then click Properties.
Click the Web Site tab. Under Connections, type the number of seconds that you want in the Connection time-out box, and then click OK.

Redirect SharePoint Site to New Location/URL

2009-08-31T12:25:00.000-05:00

If you have requirement to redirect SharePoint users to new URL. Here is the step by step approach on creating a site redirect using Content Editor Web Part (CWEP) and JavaScript:

Here is the approach:

Create a subsite or new site collection in the same server or in other server. Once your subsite or new site collection is ready, make the page simple by removing all existing web parts and follow the below mentioned steps.

1. Click on “Site Actions” > “Edit Page”

2. Add Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) to a zone of your choice by clicking on “Add a Web Part”

3. This will bring up “Add Web Parts – Webpage Dialog” windows

4. If you don’t see “Content Editor Web Part” expand “All Web Parts” and it’s usually under “Miscellaneous” section

5. Tick “Content Editor Web Part” and click on “Add” button

6. Add content to CEWP either by clicking “open the tool pane” link or edit > Modify Shared Web Part

7. The previous step will open the Web Part properties in the right pane of the page. Click on “Source Editor” button

8. “Text Entry – Webpage Dialog” Window will open with blank page

9. Add the following JavaScript to “Text Entry – Webpage Dialog” window and click “Save” button.

<Html>
<head>
<script language="JavaScript">
</script>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;url=http://servername:3333/.../[subusite]">
</head>
<body>
"Provide the Information you want to read the users"<a href=http://servername:3333/.../[subusite]>Click here to Continue>/a>
</body>
</html>

10. Users will be directed to the new URL in 10 seconds (in the above script it’s 10 seconds. This value can be modified by changing content="10 value based on the content to be read on the page.)

SharePoint Approval Workflow Vs Outlook Voting

2009-08-29T10:45:00.000-05:00

Approval and Routing of Documents via Outlook Voting:

SharePoint workflows are being recommended for the Business process and under the assumption that such a recommendation will not be timely in its implementation, a contingency method for routing and approval of documents has been developed. This method involves the use of Outlook as a means to transport the document with the addition of “voting buttons” to indicate the approval of different parties involved in the transaction.

Pros:

Easy to configure and retrieve the results
Request a delivery receipt for the message
Request a Read receipt for the message
Set an expiration date for the message

Cons:

Outlook voting involves manual process for each and every document approval configuration
The voting results are only available in Outlook of a specific user
User has to verify the results manually and take a decision to Approve or Reject the document
Not possible to set remainder or due date for response.

SharePoint Approval Workflow:

A SharePoint workflow is the automated movement of documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a business process. I would define a workflow as a business process, a chain of steps that need to be performed in order to accomplish a goal. Out of the box SharePoint has the below mentioned workflow availability.

MOSS 2007 Workflow Availability:

Approval (Serial\Parallel)
Collect Feedback
Collect Signatures (Serial\Parallel)
Disposition Approval

Approval Workflow:

The Approval workflow routes a document or item that is saved to a list or library to a group of people for approval. By default, the Serial Approval workflow is associated with Document Content Types.

Pros:

Possible to configure the workflow to a Content Types, Lists or Document Libraries
Reuse the same workflow configuration for all documents or list items
Start an Approval workflow directly from a document or item in a list or library
Have an option to Stat an Approval workflow when a new item is created or changed in the list or document library
The server assigns tasks to all individual participants or a group.
Easy to track the task status and available on the server
The server sends e-mail alerts to all participants and remainders after the due date
Participants can click a link in the e-mail task alert to open the document or item to be approved
Participants can choose to approve, reject, or reassign their approval tasks
While the workflow is in progress, the workflow owner or the workflow participants can view the Workflow Status page to see which participants have completed their workflow tasks
When the workflow participants complete their workflow tasks, the workflow ends, and the workflow owner is automatically notified that the workflow is complete

Cons:

Not possible to request a delivery receipt for the message
Not possible to request a Read receipt for the message

Link to a Document Content Type SharePoint 2007 – Sending in a email message is not working

2009-04-01T09:11:00.000-05:00

Link to a Document is one of the powerful features of SharePoint 2007. Unfortunately I am facing a wired error while using the Link to a document content type. We use the Content Type “Link to a Document” to link to a document that could be stored in another document library.

Issue:

If I send the link of a LINK content type in an email message, the user cannot open the file by clicking on the link in the message (It is opening a blank document, presentation etc..based on file type). Copying and pasting this link in the browser works fine.

An example link: http://portal1/sites/sales/DocumentLink/LinkToMasterDocument.aspx
This does not work(Opens blank document, presentation..etc.) if you click on it, but works if you cut and paste it in a browser.

Here are the steps which i followed to create a link content type:

If the document library where you want to use the “Link to a Document” hasn’t been setup to use Content Types, you’ll have to click Settings, Document Library Settings, there you’ll need to access the Advanced Settings.

We need to add a Content Type, but before we can do this we’ll have to tell our Document Library that it can make use of different Content Types. Select “Yes” for the “Allow management of Content Types“.

When you return to the Document Library Settings, you’ll see a new section called Content Types, this is where we’ll add a new Content Type, click “Add from exisiting Content Type“.

The content type we need is “Link to a Document“, add it here.

When you return to your Document Library and click new, you’ll see that you have a new option to choose from, “Link to a Document“.

Let’s make a link to a Document in another Document Library, click “Link to a Document”. You’ll have to enter a name for the Link and enter the path to the Document you want to link to.

After confirming this is what your link looks like.

We made link to a document that’s saved in another document library, whenever you make a change to the master document, you don’t need to worry about the link, and it will point to the changed document.

Up to here it works fine. It’s really a good functionality. Here is the Issue.

If I send the link of a “LinkToMasterDocument” in an email message, the user cannot open the file by clicking on the link in the message. Copying and pasting this link in the browser works fine.

Here is the snapshot:

Email Message:

An example Link: http://portal1/sites/sales/DocumentLink/LinkToMasterDocument.aspx
This does not work if you click on it, but works if you cut and paste it in a browser.

I have tried this with different site collections, but none works.
Do you see a workaround for this?

Cheers!!!

Configuration options for Installation of SharePoint 2007 in Single Server and Medium Server Farm Environments

2008-03-05T04:02:00.000-06:00

Single Server :

We can quickly publish a SharePoint site by deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single server computer.
A stand-alone configuration is useful if you want to evaluate Office SharePoint Server 2007 features and capabilities, such as collaboration, document management, and search. A stand-alone configuration is also useful if you are deploying a small number of Web sites and you want to minimize administrative overhead.
When you deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single server using the default settings, the Setup program automatically installs Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and uses it to create the configuration database and content database for your SharePoint sites.
In addition, the Setup program creates a Shared Services Provider (SSP), installs the SharePoint Central Administration Web site and creates your first SharePoint site collection and site.

Hardware and software requirements:

Stand-alone installation:

You can install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single computer by using either of the following methods:

By selecting Basic
By selecting Advanced, and then selecting Stand-alone in Office SharePoint Server 2007 Setup.

The following table lists the minimum and recommended hardware requirements for deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007, including the deployment of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, for a stand-alone installation.

Configure the server as a Web server:

Before install and configure Office SharePoint Server 2007, we must install and configure the required software. This includes installing and configuring Internet Information Services (IIS) so your computer acts as a Web server, installing the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0, and enabling ASP.NET 2.0.

Install and configure Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition:

When you install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a single server, run the Setup program using the Basic option. This option uses the Setup program's default parameters to install Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.
Medium Server:

A medium server farm typically consists of a database server, an application server running Office SharePoint Server 2007, and one or two front-end Web servers running Office SharePoint Server 2007 and IIS. In this configuration, the application server provides indexing services and Excel Calculation Services, and the front-end Web servers service search queries and provide Web content.

All of the Web servers in your server farm must have the same SharePoint Products and Technologies installed. For example, if all of the servers in your server farm are running Office SharePoint Server 2007, you cannot add to your farm a server that is running only Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. To run Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 in your server farm, you must install Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 on each of your Web servers.

Hardware and software requirements:

The primary difference between a single server and a server farm topology is that you can use one or more computers to host the following server roles:

Application server
Front-end Web server
Database server

This section describes the minimum and recommended system requirements for each server role. If you install more than one role on a single computer, ensure that the computer meets the minimum requirements for all server roles.

Application server:

The following table lists the minimum and recommended hardware requirements for deploying an Office SharePoint Server 2007 application server.

Software requirements:

Because Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, the requirements that apply to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 also apply to Office SharePoint Server 2007.
It is recommended that you install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a computer that has a new installation of Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or later and all critical updates.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 administration functions require Internet Explorer 6.0 with the most recent service packs or Internet Explorer 7.0.

Front-end Web server:

The following table lists the minimum and recommended hardware requirements for deploying an Office SharePoint Server 2007 front-end Web server.

Software requirements:

Because a front-end Web server is a subset of an application server, all features on a front-end Web server are available on an application server. The software requirements for the front-end Web server are the same as the software requirements for the application.

Database server:

The computer that hosts the database server role must have SQL Server 2000 with SP3a or later or Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP1 or later. Some advanced features required SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services SP1 or later.

Medium Server Farm Physical & logical Topology

VSTO Add-In Available for All users (Machine Level Add-In)

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I am creating a simple Add-In, which is available for all user of a machine.

VSTO Add-in Behavior:

Whenever the Add-in is being installed by the user, the add-in will be visible to that user of machine. (User based Add-in).

Issue:

VSTO Add-in is Active for the user who installed in the Trust Center and it will be "In-Active" state for all the other users of a machine.
Solution:

We have to make the Add-in as Machine Level.
I am working on VSTO add-in development, recently I faced the above issue and I resolved it. I am going to write as simple Outlook add-in to display “Greetings Veera!” message to the user, when ever user opens Outlook 2007 and the Outlook add-in is available for all users of machine (Machine Level add-in).

Steps to create an Outlook add-in project

1) Start Visual Studio 2005.
2) On the File menu, point to New, and then click Project.
The New Project dialog box appears.
3) Expand the node for the programming language you want to work in
(Visual Basic), and then select the Office node.
The document-level project types appear in the Templates pane.
4) Expand the Office node. There are child nodes for the Office 2003
and Office 2007 add-in project templates.

The New Project dialog showing Visual Studio Tools for Office templates
5) Select the Outlook Add-in template.
6) Accept the default name of Outlook1.

This will generate all the baseline code

necessary for your add-in. At this point, only the project code has been generated.

Visual Studio has not made any registry entries or security entries.
7) Press CTRL+F5 to test the add-in.

Visual Studio Tools for Office builds the add-in, registers it, sets up security for it, and starts Excel. Every time you rebuild the add-in, the registry entries and security will be re-deployed on the local machine. This is standard behavior for Visual Studio Tools for Office solutions to simplify deployment and testing on the development machine.

In Visual Studio, examine the project. In Project Explorer, you can see that the project wizard created two projects: a project for the add-in itself, and a Setup project. This is consistent with the way traditional “shared” add-in projects are created, as well as Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Outlook add-ins.

The project wizard has also added all the necessary references to the .NET, Office, and Visual Studio Tools for Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs), which support the strong-typing that Visual Studio Tools for Office add-ins use.

Finally, notice that Solution Explorer lists only one source file—ThisAddIn.vb. This file provides the standard Visual Studio Tools for Office Startup and Shutdown methods. You can put any initialization code you want into the Startup method, and any termination clean-up code you want into the Shutdown method.

Baseline code generated for an Outlook add-in (Visual Basic)

To add test code to the add-in

1) Type this line of code in the ThisAddIn_Startup method.
Private Sub ThisAddIn_Startup(ByVal sender As Object,_
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Startup
MessageBox.Show("Greetings Veera!")
End Sub
2) Press CTRL+F5 to test-run the solution again. This time, when the add-in is loaded

(just as Outlook is starting up), it will display the message box.

This article is targeted to provide the Approach for enabling the VSTO Add-in available for all the users (machine level).

Outlook Add-in needs to be “Full Trusted”, and then only the Outlook will load it. This Security can be set to the Add-in for either the Current User or the Current Machine. If we set the Security for the Current User, only the user who installed it can use the Add-in. If it is set to the current machine, then all the users will have access to the Add-in.

Deployment Procedure:

Signing the Assembly:

· In the Solution Explorer, right click the project and select Properties
· Select the Signing tab in the Properties pages.
· Select the Sign the assembly check box.
· In the Choose a strong name key file list, click .
· Type the name of the Project in the Key file name box.
· Type a password in the Enter password and Confirm password boxes.
· Click OK.
· Close the Properties pages.

Add Prerequisites to the Setup Project:

· In Solution Explorer, right-click the Setup Project, and then click Properties.
· In the Property Pages dialog box, click Prerequisites.
· In the list of prerequisites, select the following items:
a. 2007 Microsoft Office Primary Interop Assemblies
b. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office SE Runtime
· Select Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Runtime Language Pack

if any users run your solutions with non–English settings for Windows. These users must

have the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Language Pack to see runtime messages

in the same language as Windows.
· Click OK.
Add the SetSecurity Project to our Solution:

I found a sample code (available in both C# and VB.NET) published here, which may be used to handle CAS programmatically. The author has excellently handled both Install and UnInstall in his code.

Follow these steps:

1) In your VS2005 Solution, add a new Class Library project.
2) Delete the default Class1.cs file created.
3) Add a new Installer Class (SetSecurity.vb)

Cut/paste the relevant code from sample into SetSecurity.vb that you just created.

Note: You will have to include the following 2 namespaces in the SetSecurity.vb class (which were missing)
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Security.Policy
Configure the PolicyLevel and PermissionSet in the code to your needs.
Private ReadOnly installPolicyLevel As String = "Machine"
Private ReadOnly namedPermissionSet As String = "FullTrust"
In the Outlook Setup project, the Primary output from SetSecurity project needs to be included and using the Custom Actions Editor you may add it as a Custom Action for Install and UnInstall as shown below.

Build the Outlook Setup project (which references both your security project and Outlook Add-in project) and Install them on the End-User machine.

Registry Keys Settings:

Outlook Scans the Registry Settings and identifies a list of Add-in's to be loaded, hence during Installation, Our Deployment project automatically creates the necessary Registry Keys in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER. But these Registry keys will be available only for the Current User and not for other users who log into the machine. We have to export the Registry keys from the Admin User (Who Installed the Add-in) and imported the same to the Normal User’s Registry. Now the Add-in

will available for Normal user.

Limitation:

The one limitation of this approach is we have to run a separate process in end user machine (Normal User account not an admin user) to copy the Registry keys from the admin user to normal user.

MOSS 2007 Features

2007-10-05T13:03:00.000-05:00

Features are another important new feature in MOSS 2007. They are easy way to deploy changes to a SharePoint environment. You can deploy site columns, content types, assemblies, web parts, menu items, workflow, and events to new and existing Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites. The Feature framework has been extended to allow developers to create custom Features.

“An example is a set of lists and libraries combined with workflow and custom navigation that contain the functionality required to enable a certain business process to function with SharePoint”. Features make it possible to activate or deactivate functionality in the course of deployment.

Features are deployed as files on the server. They can be found in the “Features” folder, which is a sub folder of the “Template” folder.

As noted in the SDK, Features provide the following capabilities.

1)Scoping semantics for determining where custom code is runs.
2)Plugging behaviour for installing or uninstalling Features within a deployment.
3)Plugging behaviour for activating or deactivating Features at a given scope.
4)A scoped property bag for storing data required by Features within its scope.
5)The basis of a unified framework for distributed deployment of WSS 3.0 solutions.

Both developers and administrators will benefit from using Features throughout a SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. Through Features schemas, developers can scope and add simple changes, such as provisioning new pages to SharePoint site, or registering and deploying complex solutions developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, such as event handlers or workflows. Developers can also work with the SharePoint object model which includes Feature classes to effect changes throughout the life cycle of Features.

Feature Implementation

1)A Feature is implemented by adding a subfolder containing a Feature
definition file in “TEMPLATE/FEATURES”.
2)Each Feature subfolder must include a Feature.xml file that defines the
base properties of Feature and lists the element manifests associated with it.
3)After creating the Feature folder, you can install, activate, deactivate
and uninstall the Feature using the stsadm.exe command-line tool or through
the object model.
4)Features can also be activated and deactivated through the user Interface.

When you install a Feature you make its definition know to all front-end web servers across the entire server farm, meaning the area to which the Feature is scoped now display the Feature in its list of available Features to activate. When you activate a Feature, you make it available at the scope defined within the Feature definition.

Implementing Feature Events:

We can use Feature events to manage a Feature life cycle by triggering events during Feature activation and Feature deactivation. Through the Feature events we can manage the Feature lifecycle by choosing to have certain events occur through each stage of Feature deployment, such as when one of the following actions are attempted for a Feature.

1) Installed
2) Activated
3) Deactivated
4) Uninstalled

We can accomplish all of these tasks using Feature Event provisioning callouts derive from the Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiver class.

In my next post I will discuss more about MOSS 2007 Features and I will explain how to create Features in Visual Studio 2005.

Event Handlers in Share Point 2007

2007-10-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Today I want to talk about Event Handlers in Share Point 2007.

What is an Event Handler? An event handler is a .Net assembly that contains the additional business logic you need to run when the event occurs in Share Point.

Event handlers are programs that enhance and add functionality throughout Share Point sites and lists, manage events, and be deployed to new and existing sites either by code, such as creating a Project Class to register an event handler, or as part of Feature, Deploying event handlers with Features greatly simplifies the deployment process.

Well, event handlers allow you to add [Something] your business needs into the functionality of Share Point. [Something] examples:

1 ) Retrieve information from a database such as filling in the remaining fields of a list.
2) Call a web service.
3) Start a workflow.
4) Perform list data validation.
5) Convert document to PDF and store in alternative list.
6) Access data in another list.

The events include “before-the fact” or synchronous events as well as “after-the-fact” or asynchronous events. As a developer interested in catching Share Point events, you are no longer limited to only document libraries and form libraries. Now you have the ability to catch events on particularly every list type that Share Point offers, as well as at the site level, list, or library level, and the individual file level

Asynchronous vs Synchronous Events: (The “ing” and “ed”)

As you may have noticed above, there are two events, there are two events raised for each type of event. The “...ing” event occurs before the action starts and the “..ed” occurs after the actions ends. “…ing” events occur synchronously while the “…ed” events occur asynchronously. What does this mean??

Synchronous Events:

Synchronous events, events that activate before an action occurs. An example of a synchronous event is one that can trap an item before it is deleted and remove the ability for users to delete an item, such as a file in a list or document library.

i) Occurs before the event
ii)Block the flow of code execution until your event handler completes.
iii) Provide you with the ability to cancel the events resulting in no after event (“…ed”) being fired.

Asynchronous Events:

Asynchronous events, event that activate after an action occurs, such as appending an item to a list column or sending an email after a file has been uploaded or a list entry has been made.

i) Occurs after the event.
ii) Do not block the flow of code execution in share point.

The share point object model exposes several event classes, which ultimately inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly and directly inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.SPEventReceiverBase class. There are three main event classes.

1) SPWebEventReceiver
2) SPListEventReceiver
3) SPItemEventReceiver

Each class includes both synchronous and asynchronous methods to work with events at the Item, List, or web level.

In my next post I will discuss in depth about SPWebEventReceiver, SPListEventReceiver, SPItemEventReceiver classes and How to create event handlers and registering the event handlers using code.