Ben Hickman's blog

Eval VM for SharePoint 2010 RTM now available

BenHickman — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:13:09 GMT

A virtual machine for the RTM 2010 wave of product releases is now available for download:

2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM)

This environment is delivered in two virtual machines. VM “a” contains:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
Microsoft Office Web Applications
Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
Microsoft Project Server 2010
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
Microsoft Visio 2010
Microsoft Project 2010
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

VM “b” contains:

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

I use these VMs for demonstrations, testing, and proofs of concepts.

Cloud Computing link

BenHickman — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:13:00 GMT

Good article with Chris Capossela on Cloud Computing - it's not for control freaks.

New Eval Guides for SharePoint 2010

BenHickman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:34:40 GMT

We published evaluation guides for SharePoint 2010 at the conference a few weeks ago. Reading these guides is a great way to get familiar with SharePoint 2010 and get ready for the beta. Highly recommended:

IT Pro Eval Guide

Developer Eval Guide

How To Automatically Changing Permissions in a Doc Lib

BenHickman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:46:53 GMT

Or, how do you get Item-Level Permissions settings for a document library?

This frequently comes up for me with InfoPath forms libraries. For example, you are automating an HR performance review process with SharePoint workflow and InfoPath forms. Reviewers will go to a SharePoint form library, click New and fill out a performance review form for a coworker. User must be able to only see their forms. And managers must be able to see the forms for their direct reports.

If you look at the Advanced Settings for a SharePoint list (e.g. a Task list or custom list), you will see these options:

This looks like exactly what you want. However, if you look at the Advanced Settings for a document library, there are no such settings.

Fortunately, there is a codeplex solution: Change item’s permissions on creation. I really like this implementation because it is an Information Management policy. I started looking into implementation a solution myself and the tricky part started to be: how is a user going to specify the document library. Using an Information Management policy is perfect because it uses an existing mechanism for making library-wide settings.

SharePoint Designer Workflows – what user identity?

BenHickman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:30:16 GMT

When a SharePoint Designer (SPD) workflow runs, it runs in the context of the workflow initiator. This is important to know if the initiator may not have permissions to everything that the workflow uses.

An example:

A broad set of users have permissions to load documents into a library named Active.
A small set of users process the documents and change a Status column to Verified when done (it’s preset to New in the previous step).
You want a workflow to move the documents from the Active library to the Archive library when Status = Verified.
The users that load documents into Active do not have any permissions to Archive.

You have two choices for creating this workflow in SPD:

Automatically start this workflow when a new item is created, with these steps:
Automatically start this workflow whenever an item is changed, with these steps:

Both workflows will run under the context of the initiator. In this case, the initiators will be different and have different permissions.

In the first case, the initiator is the user that loaded the document and that user does not have permissions to the Archive library. Meaning this workflow will always fail because it will not have permissions to perform the copy step.

In the second case, the initiator is the user that changes the status to verified. That will be a user with permissions to the Archive library. That workflow will succeed.

So consider permissions when choosing between various SPD workflow options.

Secondary Workflow Example in SharePoint Designer

BenHickman — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:49:49 GMT

I recently built a prototype to show how SharePoint and SharePoint Designer workflows can be used to automate an HR performance review process. I had to use a secondary workflow as described in SharePoint Designer: Create a secondary workflow, but had to come up with a different solution for how to set due dates. Following is an explanation of why I needed the secondary workflow for this example and how I got the due dates to work.

The basic requirements are:

A manager wants to start a performance review process for an employee.
Each employee has some list of people to review them.
The review consists of filling out an InfoPath form.

I created the following in SharePoint:

List/Library	Purpose
Performance Reviews	An InfoPath form library that will contain completed review forms. This form library contains the performance review form as an InfoPath form template.
Reviewer Tasks	A task list to store tasks assigned to reviewers.
Reviewers	A custom list of reviewers for each person being reviewed. This list has two columns: Employee and Reviewers. The latter is a multiple select Person column.

Now the workflows. A workflow needs a list or library item to be started. Since the Performance Reviews form library only contains completed review forms, it is not a candidate for the workflow. Instead, my Reviewers list contains the mapping between employees and reviewers and is where the workflow will start. Following the diagramming used in the referenced article, here are my lists and workflows:

A manager manually starts the Performance Review workflow for a particular employee. This workflow uses an initiation variable to get the Due Date for the performance review from the manager.
The Performance Review workflow creates tasks for each of the reviewers.
The Set Task Details workflow runs automatically on each of the new tasks to set their details and send email notifications to the reviewers.

The Performance Review workflow uses the Assign a To-Do Item action to assign tasks to the reviewers.The Set Task Details workflow is required because the Assign a To-Do Item action has the following limitations in this case:

It only supports a static title and description. I need both the title and the description to include lookup fields so the assigned tasks are most meaningful to the reviewers (e.g. “Please complete a performance review for Ben Hickman”).
It doesn’t support a due date. I want to set a due date on the tasks.
It does not send email notifications that a task has been assigned. I could setup Alerts on the task list, but I want control over the format and details of the email notifications.

Now the trick is: how does the Secondary Workflow find the Employee name and the Due Date? As described in the article referenced above, the Secondary Workflow can use the Current Item – Workflow Item ID to reference the Reviewers item id that caused the task to be created. I can then use that Workflow Item ID to lookup the associated item in the Reviewers list and lookup the Employee name, like this:

Now, how about the Due Date? Since I gathered that as an initiation variable in the Primary Workflow, it’s not immediately available to the Secondary Workflow. So, I better make it available. I do that by having the Primary Workflow store it in the Current Due Date column in the Reviewers list. Then, the Secondary workflow can look it up just like Employee like this:

Now I have tasks with rich titles and descriptions, specific due dates, and detailed notification emails.

Content Query Web Part example

BenHickman — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:42:55 GMT

I recently got deeper into using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) than I had in a while and learned a few things. The first thing you should do to learn about the CQWP is read this article from Heather Solomon’s blog: Customizing the Content Query Web Part and Custom Item Styles. I follow the process she describes when using the CQWP.

The Solution

We built a Site Collection that included a top-level site with highlighted and summary content and a large number of sub-sites that included wikis and blogs. Each sub-site had a different group of content contributors. The owner of the top-level site wants to be able to highlight and promote sub-site content to the top landing page. I built this with a custom list and a CQWP.

The custom list contains enough columns to reference content by URL and add summary info that can be display at the top-level landing page:

Then I placed a CQWP on the landing page to display that custom list with a specific layout:

CQWP Details

Here is what I learned in the process. All of this applies to the XSL you write in ItemStyle.xsl.

Debugging

When working with custom fields in the XSL, it was helpful to use this to display all the column names and their values:

<xsl:for-each select="@*">
F:<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>--<xsl:value-of select="."/><br/>
</xsl:for-each>

URL Columns

Using the script above on a URL column, you’ll notice that URL values are stored as “http://msdn.microsoft.com, http://msdn.microsoft.com”. This is to support this style of rendering:

<a href="{substring-before(@URLColumn, ', ')}">
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after(@URLColumn, ', ')"/>
</a>

Therefore, if you just want the URL, use substring-before(@URLColumn, ‘, ‘).

Pictures and Rich Text

Both Picture and Rich Text column types are stored with embedded HTML markup. By default, when you use XSL to render these column values, the HTML is escaped and the viewer sees the actual markup rather than just the formatted content. To render these column values, use the disable-output-escaping attribute:

<div class="image-area-left">
<xsl:value-of select="@Icon" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
</div>

Rating Web Part

Finally, I used the Rating web part from Codeplex to allow viewers to rate the content. Now I needed to display the rating value or a link to rate the item in the CQWP. Here’s how I did that:

<xsl:variable name="ListGuid">
    <xsl:value-of select="@ListId"/>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:variable name="ItemId">
    <xsl:value-of select="@ID"/>
</xsl:variable>

<div>
    <xsl:choose>
         <xsl:when test="contains($Rating, '(5)')">
              <img src="/_layouts/images/sptoolbasket/rating_5.gif" alt="{$Rating}"/>
         </xsl:when>
         <xsl:when test="contains($Rating, '(4)')">
              <img src="/_layouts/images/sptoolbasket/rating_4.gif" alt="{$Rating}"/>
         </xsl:when>
         <xsl:when test="contains($Rating, '(3)')">
              <img src="/_layouts/images/sptoolbasket/rating_3.gif" alt="{$Rating}"/>
         </xsl:when>
         <xsl:when test="contains($Rating, '(2)')">
              <img src="/_layouts/images/sptoolbasket/rating_2.gif" alt="{$Rating}"/>
         </xsl:when>
         <xsl:when test="contains($Rating, '(1)')">
              <img src="/_layouts/images/sptoolbasket/rating_1.gif" alt="{$Rating}"/>
         </xsl:when>
         <xsl:otherwise>
              <a href="/_layouts/sptoolbasket/ItemRating.aspx?Id={$ItemId}&List={$ListGuid}">Rate</a>
         </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</div>

The CQWP is powerful both for formatting the display as well as query content. In this particular case, I used the former more than the latter since I was only querying a single list.

Accessing columns in the User Information List

BenHickman — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:07:04 GMT

I was recently asked how to programmatically retrieve custom fields from the User Information List via a Web service.

It turns out that the GetUserInfo web method does not return any custom fields that you might add to the User Information List (aka People & Groups).

Instead, just treat this as a regular SharePoint list and you can access the columns via the GetListItems web method from Lists.asmx.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    ListsService.Lists svcLists = new ListsService.Lists();
    svcLists.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.LoadXml("<Document><Query /><ViewFields /><QueryOptions /></Document>");
    XmlNode listQuery = doc.SelectSingleNode("//Query");
    XmlNode listViewFields = doc.SelectSingleNode("//ViewFields");
    XmlNode listQueryOptions = doc.SelectSingleNode("//QueryOptions");
    Guid g = GetWebID("http://moss.litwareinc.com");
    System.Xml.XmlNode items = svcLists.GetListItems("User Information List",
        string.Empty, listQuery, listViewFields, string.Empty, listQueryOptions,                 g.ToString());
    Console.WriteLine(items.OuterXml);
}

private static Guid GetWebID(string webPath)
{
    SiteDataService.SiteData svcSiteData = new SiteDataService.SiteData();
    svcSiteData.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
    SiteDataService._sWebMetadata webMetaData;
    SiteDataService._sWebWithTime[] arrWebWithTime;
    SiteDataService._sListWithTime[] arrListWithTime;
    SiteDataService._sFPUrl[] arrUrls;
    string roles;
    string[] roleUsers;
    string[] roleGroups;
    svcSiteData.Url = webPath + "/_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx";
    uint i = svcSiteData.GetWeb(out webMetaData, out arrWebWithTime,
        out arrListWithTime, out arrUrls, out roles, out roleUsers,
        out roleGroups);
    Guid g = new Guid(webMetaData.WebID);
    return g;
}

Now if I add a column to the User Information List, that new column appears in the items list.

One other option is RSS. The User Information List has an RSS feed and you can configure it to include your custom columns. Of course, this only shows new records and is not useful for export or update.

One Part of Microsoft.com now running on SharePoint

BenHickman — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:27:03 GMT

Yesterday http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint converted over to SharePoint and Silverlight. It’s nice to have a microsoft.com example to add to the list of public facing sites running SharePoint.

There’s an upcoming SharePoint team blog posting on how it was done.

SharePoint Server 2010 announced

BenHickman — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:41:05 GMT

I will need to switch from saying SharePoint 14 to SharePoint 2010 now. Details of the announcement are on the SharePoint Team Blog.

New Capabilities for SharePoint

BenHickman — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:25:23 GMT

Today we announced the ESP for SharePoint product that provides high end search capabilities within SharePoint. We also detailed the road map for the next version of SharePoint and how these high end search capabilities will be folded into the platform. Details are in the blog posting:

Microsoft Unveils New Enterprise Search Road Map

A few weeks ago, we also announced that our BI products, Performance Point, are also being rolled into SharePoint:

Microsoft Business Intelligence strategy update and SharePoint

This is huge news for SharePoint and our customers that have already made an investment in this platform. Powerful new capabilities have been added to SharePoint to democratize BI and enable powerful and customizable search experiences.

New SharePoint for Developers Ramp Up Training

BenHickman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:38:00 GMT

As part of the MSDN Ramp Up training program, there is now a track for SharePoint Developers:

SharePoint for Developers Track

This track consists of 5 levels of training content:

Web Parts
Data Lists
Event Handlers
Workflow
Silverlight Web Parts

Each level contains a collection of articles, slide casts, code casts, and virtual labs. This is an awesome new resource to get up to speed with SharePoint development quickly.

Did I mention it's free of charge?

SharePoint Guidance from Patterns & Practices

BenHickman — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:38:14 GMT

The Patterns & Practices group at Microsoft has just released SharePoint Guidance documents. This is Microsoft's recommendations for how to design, develop, deploy and operate architecturally sound applications on the Microsoft platform.

This guidance documentation set is targeted at helping you build intranet applications with SharePoint. It's not just a whitepaper. It includes a reference implementation of a training management application built on SharePoint. Meaning you get a better understand of not only the technical details of how to implement the solution, but also the architectural decisions about patterns, factoring, and packaging. You'll also see the design tradeoffs that you will likely encounter when creating intranet applications with MOSS.

Highly recommended:

SharePoint Guidance: http://microsoft.com/spg
Codeplex site: http://codeplex.com/spg
Community forum: http://www.codeplex.com/spg/Thread/List.aspx

New Home for Ben Hickman's Blog

BenHickman — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:11:07 GMT

If you got a slew of RSS feed updates today it's because I moved my blog over to MSDN.

I've moved all the old posts over here and this is the new home.

Office 14 for the Web

BenHickman — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:51:46 GMT

Yesterday at the PDC2008 conference, we announced Office 14 for the Web. There is a great Channel 9 video with a demo:

First Look: Office 14 for Web

There are also some good screen shots on Joel Oleson's blog:

Office 14 Web applications in SharePoint

Office 14 will support rich desktop client, Web browser, and mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. The browser versions will be cross platform and cross browser. These versions will also support simultaneous editors of a single document across the three client choices.

The Web browser versions will be available through OfficeLive in an ad supported model, as an online subscription or via SharePoint 14.

Good SharePoint Designer Book

BenHickman — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:51:05 GMT

It's good to see some SharePoint Designer books starting to appear. Even though I use Visual Studio .NET alot, I still use SharePoint Designer for master page development, the Data View Web Part, and simple workflows.

I picked up this book and it is especially good at covering the Data View Web Part:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step by Step

by Penelope Coventry

Content Rating for MOSS Released on CodePlex

BenHickman — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:49:16 GMT

I just found out that a Content Rating solution for MOSS 2007 was released to CodePlex earlier this month:

Content Rating for MOSS 2007

This is very cool. Now you can build sites that allow users to rate and comment on SharePoint content. For example, create an FAQ site using the Wiki template and allow users to rate the FAQs.

It's also used the in the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint so users can rate uploaded Podcasts.

The solution includes a database schema, web parts, and fields.

SharePoint Licensing Info

BenHickman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:46:53 GMT

I gave an overview presentation last week on SharePoint for Internet and extranet sites. During the Q/A, I got some questions about licensing of WSS and MOSS for these scenarios. There are a number of different parameters that affect licensing and here is a good FAQ on the topic:

MOSS 2007 FAQs: Licensing
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101655351033.aspx#2

SharePoint Firestarter Recordings

BenHickman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:46:09 GMT

The recordings of the SharePoint Firestarter event that I presented at last week are now online:

Introduction To Day & Keynote:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419&role=attend

Whirlwind SharePoint on Visual Studio:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-1&role=attend

Silverlight on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-2&role=attend

Web Parts on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-3&role=attend

Web Services on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-4&role=attend

Workflow on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-5&role=attend

Event Handlers on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-6&role=attend

Page Branding on SharePoint:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032380419-7&role=attend

New Portland User Group Web site

BenHickman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:45:27 GMT

I am very happy to announce that the kind folks at Netropole have created and host a site for the Portland SharePoint User Group: http://www.portlandsharepoint.com.

You can use this site to stay up to date on upcoming meetings on the Events calendar (RSS feed). You can also subscribe/unsubscribe from the newsletter on the Home page. We use this list to send out meeting announcements via email.

Any suggestions, please leave a comment!

June 2008 PSUG Meeting

BenHickman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:44:42 GMT

For June we have a great presentation from James Curry, an instructor with Mindsharp. We also have a fantastic give-away this month. Mindsharp has generously donated a $3,000 voucher for admission to their upcoming training event in Portland! The training event is from July 28– August 1 and includes the following sessions:

5-day WSS 3.0 Developer (syllabus)
5-day 2007 SharePoint Designer (syllabus)
3-day 2007 SharePoint Power User (syllabus)

Mindsharp is also offering a 15% discount to this upcoming training event.

What:
June PSUG Meeting

When:
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
11:30am - 1:00pm

Where:
Microsoft Portland Office
10260 SW Greenburg Rd.
Lincoln Tower, Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

Topic:

James Curry from Mindsharp will discuss Field Types and Field Controls. Fields are the underlying data types for SharePoint list columns and site columns. SharePoint provides a number of fields, such as Number, Counter, Multi-Choice, Boolean, and URL. Custom fields can be created to allow custom validation of data and presentation beyond what is possible with the native SharePoint fields. Field controls are Server Controls or User Controls that can be used to provide custom presentation of data stored in a given field type. Server controls allow information stored in SharePoint lists to be presented in a very rich manner. As an example, a single line of text that contains an address could be presented using a field control as push pin on a map. Field Controls provide a far superior method of custom presentation than using the options natively available in a Field Type.

Presenter:

James Curry is a respected computer scientist and consultant with over 15 years of programming experience. In his role as a Mindsharp instructor, James uses his knowledge of Microsoft products to provide students with a dynamic, hands-on classroom experience.

James is a contributing author of a SharePoint products and technologies book. He has been invited to speak at user groups on subjects such as Customizing SharePoint 2007.

As a computer scientist with InfoPro Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, James developed information management solutions for organizations of all sizes. Prior to joining Mindsharp, James focused on developing Web applications for a large governmental organization. James currently resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

SharePoint and Web 2.0 Developer Event

BenHickman — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:43:42 GMT

Very late notice, but I am presenting at a great day long event on SharePoint & Web 2.0 technologies next Wednesday (6/11/2008). There will be a day full of great developer topics presented by our internal experts. Not to be missed.

You can attend in person in Redmond, WA or via Live Meeting. We have already expanded capacity once, so this event is likely to fill up:

Register NOW to attend In-person!

Register HERE to attend via Live Meeting!

Agenda

8:00 am – 8:30 am

Breakfast

8:30 am – 9:00 am

Introduction to day & Keynote

Mithun Dhar & Ben Hickman

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Whirlwind SharePoint on Visual Studio - VSeWSS

Paul Andrew

10:00 am – 10:15 am

Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am

Silverlight on SharePoint

Steve Fox

11:15 am – 12:15 pm

Web Parts on SharePoint

John Durant

12:15 pm – 1:00 pm

Lunch

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Web Services on SharePoint

Paul Stubbs

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Workflow on SharePoint

Eilene Hao

3:00 pm – 3:15 pm

Break

3:15 pm – 4:15 pm

Event Handlers on SharePoint

Chris Johnson

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm

Page Branding on SharePoint

Jeff Lin & Westley Hall

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Networking

Now Here's a T-Shirt

BenHickman — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:42:05 GMT

"My WebPart can beat up your server control." Warms the heart of a SharePoint Developer.

New Resource for SharePoint Developers

BenHickman — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:40:10 GMT

We have a new site to help .NET developers get going with SharePoint development:

http://www.mssharepointdeveloper.com

The site is organized by SharePoint artifacts that developers can create to extend SharePoint:

Web Parts
Data Lists
Event Handlers
Workflows
Silverlight Web Parts
Page Navigation
Page Branding
Web Services
Content Types
User Management

I often talk to IT developers about SharePoint the development platform. The majority of intranet and Internet applications that you pick up ASP.NET to create can be created more quickly in SharePoint. With SharePoint, you can leverage the platform services (Permissions, Authentication, Administration, Site Model, UI, etc.) and focus more directly on your business problem. Also, the SharePoint Feature (as in "capital-F Feature") is possibly the holy grail of reuse. Features can handle from the small (think CSS snippets) to the large (.NET Assemblies, InfoPath forms, etc.), can be turned on and used by end users, and can be installed and managed by administrators. Very, very powerful.

Check it out.

Released: MOSS Search Connectors for FileNet and Documentum

BenHickman — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:37:54 GMT

We have released indexing connectors for IBM FileNet and EMC Documentum for crawling and returning search results from these repositories. These work with MOSS 2007, Search Server 2008, and Search Server 2008 Express: