JOPX on SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2007 and Windows Phone 7

Solve disabled insert picture from SharePoint option in SharePoint 2010

2012-05-24T21:02:00.001+02:00

A couple of days ago I created a Wiki Page Library on a site created with the blank template. When I tried to insert an image into the wiki page – the “insert from SharePoint” option was greyed out. Luckily this was quite easy to solve by activating the SharePoint Server Publishing feature (Site level).

This will only work for wiki pages though – I noticed that when you use a field of type “Multiple lines of text (Enhanced rich text (Rich text with pictures, tables, and hyperlinks)” you will notice that although you see the Insert Picture option – the “Insert from SharePoint” is still greyed out even when activating the SharePoint Server Publishing feature (Site level).

Tags van Technorati: SharePoint,SharePoint+2010,SPS2010,microsoft

Some things you probably did not know about about FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

2012-05-24T20:34:00.001+02:00

The FAST Query Language (FQL) supports both post & prefix wildcards – unfortunately the standard search box in SharePoint will only work with prefix wildcards.
You can use up to 3 whole word extractors – these are a very efficient way to enhance your search refiners.
FAST automatically recognizes the “primary” language of a document but it does not really do “translation” of search results.
The native content processing pipeline stages have been written in Python.
People search in SharePoint Server 2010 is still powered by SharePoint and not by Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint – check out How to get SharePoint 2010 people search to work with FAST Search 2010
Word document thumbnail preview and PowerPoint preview is not powered by FAST Search Server 2010 but by the Office Web Apis (see Two little known facts about the thumbnail and Powerpoint preview feature in FAST Search Server 2010 for more details)
There are already a number of standard property extractors available in FAST – for companies, locations and person names. Companies and Locations are activated by default but not present in the search result page. The person names extractor is not activated by default and you will need to modify OptionalProcessing.xml to allow for person name extraction – see Using the default property extractors in FAST and how it works with the search refinements
If you want to try out FAST and SharePoint without having to do a complete install yourself, you can use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM) image – which also includes FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint but … don’t forget to create a new certificate – see Having problems with FAST and the Microsoft Information Worker virtual image, try creating a new certificate.

Tags van Technorati: FAST,Enterprise+search,SharePoint,Microsoft,SharePoint2010,SPS2010

Setting up a development environment for SharePoint and Windows Phone 7

2012-04-26T21:04:00.000+02:00

There are basically 3 flavors of setup that you can use for setting up a development environment when you want to build a Windows Phone 7 app that integrates with SharePoint:

Physical single machine setup using Windows 7: install both SharePoint 2010 and Windows Phone 7 on a physical Windows 7 machine. This will not work in a virtual environment since SharePoint requires a 64 bit machine and the Windows Phone SDK requires a 32 bit setup when installing in a virtual environment. Installing the Windows Phone SDK on the Windows 7 host and using VMWare is not an option either – see Help – Windows Phone 7.1 emulator crashes my VMWare workstation. You can not install the Phone SDK on a Windows Server 2008 (R2) but there seems to be a workaround which you can use at your own risk (I did not test it).
Single machine with Windows Server 2008 R2 hosting 2 VHDs – one with Windows 7 and one with Windows Server 2008 R2
Two physical machines – one with Windows Server 2008 and one with Windows Phone 7
Use a hosted solution for SharePoint such as Cloudshare

If you just want to experiment with integrating WP7 and SharePoint Server 2010 don’t not use Office 365/SharePoint Online since SharePoint Online uses quite a different authentication mechanism compared to an on-premise deployment of SharePoint. If anyone has a working sample of a Windows Phone 7 app connecting to SharePoint Online please leave a comment.

Tags van Technorati: wp7,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,spsbe,development,microsoft

RSS Feeds are default not enabled in SharePoint 2010

2012-04-25T21:40:00.000+02:00

Default RSS feeds for SharePoint lists are not enabled – you will need to enable it per site collection. On the RSS settings page you will also be able to add some additional info to include into the feed such as copyright statement, managing editor, webmaster as well as the time to live (in minutes).

Next you need to define on a per list basis whether you will allow RSS feeds. It is also in this screen that you can define whether you want to include additional fields/columns in the RSS feed. Be careful though, when you add additional columns outside of the standard fields in RSS (title and link), these will be exposed in formatted HTM and not XML which will make it difficult to parse.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,RSS,sps2010,microsoft

SharePoint Designer 2010 Custom Actions–Lock a SharePoint Discussion thread

2012-04-18T20:43:00.001+02:00

I recently got a question whether it would be possible to lock a discussion thread in SharePoint 2010. The quickest (no code solution) according to me would be to use the new quick step/custom action features in SharePoint 2010. For a basic overview take a look at SharePoint 2010 – Create a new quick step & custom actions .

My first idea was to hook a SharePoint 2010 workflow with just one workflow action to the new quick step – declare as record (part of the new records management capabilities in SharePoint 2010) – check out this full list of the available workflow actions in SharePoint Designer 2010 . Unfortunately a discussion thread is actually built on top of a folder content type and you can’t declare a folder content type as record.

Next I took a look at adding a workflow action to SharePoint Designer 2010 to change the security on the specific discussion thread. Unfortunately there is no such workflow action available out of the box in SharePoint Designer 2010. So two options – either built one yourself (this is pretty similar to what you did in 2007) – for a interesting rundown take a look at Make a custom activity available to SharePoint Designer 2010 or you can take a look at the SharePoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities project on Codeplex which provides the following custom actions:

Send Email with HTTP File attachment - Allows sending emails with attachments retrieved using a web request
Send Email with List Item attachments - Allows sending list item attachments as files attached to an email
Start Another Workflow - Starts another workflow associated with a list item
Grant Permission on Item - Allows granting of specified permission level on a specified item
Delete List Item Permission Assigment - Allows deleting of specified permission level assignment for a given user
Reset List Permissions Inheritance - removes any unique permissions assigned to an item by inheriting list permissions
Is User a member of a SharePoint group - Checks if a given user is part of given SharePoint group
Is Role assigned to User - Checks if a user role is already assigned on the current list item
Lookup user info - allows to lookup properties in site's user information list for a given login
NEW! Copy List Item Extended Activity - Allows copying/moving list items and files cross site.
NEW! Send Email Extended - Enhanced version of the OOTB activity. Allows you to specify the sender. Also does not break links in body.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps2010,spd2010,sharepoint+designer2010,codeplex,community,microsoft

Survey on SharePoint deployment in Belgium

2012-04-12T20:36:00.001+02:00

Please take a moment of your time to fill in a survey around SharePoint deployment in Belgium organized by two students from the University College of Ghent:

Thank you for taking the time to respond to this survey. This survey is organized by the University College Ghent. It is aimed at measuring the deployment of Microsoft SharePoint in Belgium. Answering the approximately 25 questions will take about 5 to 10 minutes.

Try to be honest when you answer the questions, we can assure you that all the data is confidential and will only be processed by the researchers. No answer is right or wrong, we only want to know your opinion. Please try to fill in every question, even if you have doubts.

The survey is anonymous, but if you are interested in the result of our survey you can fill in your e-mail address at the end of the survey and we will send you the result. This e-mail address will only be accessible by the researchers and won’t be given to third-party companies. Feel free to send out the survey link to other interested persons or to distribute it through social media channels – the goal of this survey is to reach as many SharePoint users as possible within Belgium.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sps2010,belgium,microsoft,user+adoption

Accessing Microsoft CRM 4.0 data using web services

2012-04-10T21:33:00.001+02:00

A couple of days ago I wanted to write a plugin for Excel 2010 which would allow me to do lookups in Microsoft CRM 4.0 for adding extra information to a worksheet.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this was. Microsoft CRM 4.0 exposes all of its data through the CrmService web service - http://[server:port]/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx which exposes a number of interesting methods ( see CrmService Common methods) of which one is the CrmService.Fetch method which allows for retrieving CRM entities in XML based on a specified XML query syntax which is called FetchXML.

The only tricky part is creating this FetchXML but there are a number of tools that you can use to actually generate this FetchXML:

Stunnware Tools for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
FetchXML Builder on Codeplex – free tool

There is however another simpler method – just open CRM 4.0 and use the Advanced Option to create a new search. Click CTRL+N to open a new window with the address bar visible – now build your query and click Find. When the search results screen appears – paste the following in the address bar - javascript:alert(resultRender.FetchXml.value); and hit enter

Tags van Technorati: CRM,microsoft,visual+studio,MSCRM

Dear manager, why you should give me a touch-enabled developer portable … or a separate touch enabled tablet

2012-03-28T21:13:00.001+02:00

If you look at ATMs, automatic checkouts at grocery stores or even at the on board computing you will notice that there’s a change in how you interact with these devices: you touch the screen to start the interaction.

In 2008 Gartner analyst Steve Prentice predicted the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years (see Say goodbye to the computer mouse), a statement which now seems a little bit exaggerated but maybe it is only the timeline were he was off.

Currently when you think about a great touch experience you think about smartphones and tablets (with the most notable examples the iPhone and iPad) but not really about PCs.

But touch as a way of interacting with business applications would in fact make more sense in some scenarios or provide a more intuitive user experience – something which sometimes referred to as NUI (Natural User Interfaces).

With the introduction of Windows 8 – Microsoft will finally be able to compete with the Android and iOS user experience (See Windows 8: Touch Keyboard – Handwriting recognition, metro UI (You Tube video)) by providing as a first-class experience.

In 2011 the PC market grew 15% to 414.6 million units of which 15% tablets (majority driven by iOS or Android) (Source: Canalys) – this leaves about 300 million PCs shipped with Windows on it. Even if this number declines in 2012-2013 this still provides for an enormous user base which will be accustomed to using touch in applications. When you look at the current types of applications in the Apple market place or even on the Windows 8 market place you will notice that the majority is aimed at consumers and not at business scenarios.

But consumerization of IT will force developers of business applications to provide the same fluid (and natural) user experience. An interesting statement is made in Consumerization of IT: Getting beyond the Myths:

And while browsing e-mail and social networking sites is still the primary use of personal devices, executives say the consumerization of IT is playing an increasingly important role in mission-critical tasks such as customer relationship management, time and expense tracking, and enterprise resource planning.

For us developers building touch-based touch-based systems will require understanding a new set of guidelines, thinking about user scenarios and target audiences and careful interface design. Off course it all starts with having a touch enabled device.

The thing I’m not really sure about is whether to use a touch enabled portable (I really like the Lenovo X220) or buying a separate tablet such as the Acer Iconia Tab W500 or the more pricier option a Samsung Series 7 XE700T1A. From a developer perspective, this would also provide for a viable alternative since Visual Studio 2011 Beta provides the ability to debug your Metro apps remotely).

Leave your comments and thoughts …

References:

Technorati Tags: windows8,touch,visualstudio2011,metro,NUI,consumerization

Introduction to OData and SharePoint Server 2010

2012-03-27T19:55:00.001+02:00

Open Data Protocol (OData) is quickly gaining popularity as a web protocol for querying and updating data. A few Microsoft products already expose their functionality as OData services, including SharePoint 2010, SQL Azure and SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services. OData is a set of extensions of the ATOM protocol to makes it easier to share data over the web.

In SharePoint Server 2010 every SharePoint list is exposed through an OData REST API (you might also see some people referring to it as WCF Data Services) – which you can access using the following URL format:

http://[sharepointserver]/_vti_bin/listdata.svc – returns an ATOM document describing the different lists which are available in that specific site.
http://[sharepointserver]/_vti_bin/listdata.svc/Projects – returns an entry for every single list item in the “Projects” list
http://[sharepointserver]/_vti_bin/listdata.svc/Projects(2) – returns a specific list item with ID=2 from the projects list

References:

Technorati Tags: odata,sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sps2010,REST,WCF+Data+Services

Excel versus SharePoint lists–interesting links

2012-03-26T08:59:00.001+02:00

Most people think about using document libraries when managing documents within SharePoint but maybe you could use SharePoint lists as an alternative for your Excel documents – check out these excellent articles for more information:

Tags van Technorati: SharePoint,Excel,Office

TechDays 2012 Belgium Content available online

2012-03-13T07:45:00.000+01:00

All recorded content and slides for TechDays 2012 Belgium are available online since last week, including related downloads and content. Check it out on techdays.be

Second SharePoint Saturday Belgium on 28th April 2012

2012-03-07T15:48:00.001+01:00

On Saturday the 28th of April BIWUG is organizing SharePoint Saturday Belgium for the second time. SharePoint Saturday is an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!

Don’t forget to register for the event using this link - http://spsbe2012.eventbrite.com/.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+saturday,community,biwug,sps2010,sps

Belgian Windows Phone 7 User Group–www.wiphug.be is launched

2012-03-07T15:39:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago WiPhug was launched - WiPhug is a Belgian user group that focuses on Windows Phone development. The idea is to share knowledge, skills and ideas with the entire community not only about Windows Phone development but also about everything that has something to do with WP7.

WiPhug is currently been run by Dennis Miscoria, Danny Van Neyghem, Nico Vermeir, Glenn Versweyveld, Bart Lannoeye, Michael Bruyninckx and Johan Peeters.

End of April they will organize their first event at RealDolmen Kontich which is fully booked. Make sure to follow the website for more news about coming events.

Technorati Tags: windows+phone,wp7be,wp7,wiphug

Microsoft Extended Experts Team MSDN

2012-03-07T15:28:00.004+01:00

Heb je een complex probleem, maar niet de kennis om het op te lossen? Dan kun je op deze MEET pagina in contact komen met een community van Belgische experts.

Alle leden van MEET zijn geselecteerd voor hun kennis en vaardigheden in hun vakgebied. En ze zijn bovendien uitstekende communicators. Allen delen ze kun kennis via hun persoonlijke blog en regelmatig houden ze ook lezingen voor Microsoft of hun respectievelijke user group.

MEET krijgt de uitdrukkelijke steun van Microsoft België en Luxemburg. Mail naar msdnbewm@microsoft.com voor meer informatie over het programma.

Op zoek naar infrastructuur experts? Ga naar de TechNet MEET members.

[FUN]: Object is in a zombie state

2012-03-07T15:17:00.000+01:00

SharePoint development inspired by the movies – LOL:

Export timephased ( or timescaled) project data to Excel from MS Project 2010 with visual reports

2012-02-04T20:15:00.000+01:00

In MS Project 2003 you had a separate button – Analyze Timescaled Data in Excel, for those of you who are looking for this functionality in MS Project 2010 – take a look at the new Visual Reports feature in 2010.

Tags van Technorati: Excel,MSProject,Microsoft

The surprising truth about using [Today] in SharePoint 2010 Filters–showing items from the last 7 days

2012-01-30T20:55:00.001+01:00

When you want to show the items created in the last 7 days in a specific SharePoint view you need to keep two things in mind:

Make sure that you remove spaces from the filter value – otherwise you will get “Filter value is not in a supported date format” – so “[Today]-7” works but “[Today] – 7” will not work
Apparently the “[Today]” parameter is MUI aware – so when you creating a formula with Dutch as language you have to use [Vandaag] (For more about MUI check out Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part I as well as Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2010 – Part II)

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,MUI,views,microsoft

Microsoft Business Ready Security Trial Environment

2012-01-26T20:07:00.001+01:00

The Microsoft Business Ready Security trial environment contains an interesting set of VJDs that you can use to evaluate protection, access, management and identity technologies from Microsoft as a pre-configured set of VHDs and is using the following products:

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010
Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange/Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint/Forefront Protection for Server Management Console
Forefront Identity Manager 2010
Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010
Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010
Active Directory Rights Management Services

Download Details – Microsoft Business Ready Security Trial Environment

Tags van Technorati: Forefront,UAG,RMS,Microsoft,security,identity+management

Book Review–Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook

2012-01-26T20:03:00.002+01:00

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook is an excellent book which is aimed specifically at getting things done in SharePoint without requiring development or hardcore administration skills. And I must say I like it.

This book is a must have reference guide for business power users who use SharePoint in their daily job but don’t need to know all the background about how SharePoint exactly works from a system perspective.

It is however also very useful for SharePoint administrators who need to perform common SharePoint tasks as well as for SharePoint business analysts and project manager who need a more practical view on how to accomplish things in SharePoint.

It contains over 70 recipes going from very basic tasks such as creating site columns, securing objects, etc … to more complex tasks such as creating external content types, creating dashboards using PerformancePoint Dashboard designer. Each of these recipes contains a number of different sections:

Getting ready – explains for which version of SharePoint it works
How to do it – step by step guideline about how to configure things in SharePoint
How it works and There’s more – background information
See also – reference to related recipes.

Each recipe consists of a limited number of pages containing the bare essential for getting your SharePoint task done. Great job from the authors…

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,book+review,sharepoint+2010,microsoft

Outlook 2010 Quick Tip – Showing week numbers

2012-01-23T21:09:00.000+01:00

Just a reminder to myself – Outlook 2010 makes it possible to show week numbers in Calendar View. Go to the Outlook Backstage > Options > Calendar

and check Show Weeknumbers in the Month View and in the Date Navigator

Tags van Technorati: Outlook2010,microsoft

My favorite 5 sessions for TechDays 2012 Belgium

2012-01-23T21:03:00.001+01:00

You smell that? Do you smell that? New technologies, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of new technologies in the morning… (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now) .

Yep, TechDays 2012 is coming near, so don’t forget to register – there are still some seats available. If you don’t know what to choose, check out my list of favorite sessions below:

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,techdays2012,techdays+belgium,microsoft,development,ITPro,HTML5,Governance

Wondering how companies are using SharePoint?

2012-01-23T20:48:00.001+01:00

Are you wondering how other companies are using SharePoint Server 2010? Then you definitely need to take a look at these different surveys which were conducted in 2010 and 2011:

Tags van Technorati: SharePoint,user+adoption,sps2010,sharepoint+2010,microsoft,forrester,global360,colligo,quest

Final BIWUG Session for 2012 – SharePoint 2010 Variations (Level 400)

2011-12-13T20:59:00.001+01:00

In order to finalize the SharePoint multilingual sessions BIWUG ( the Belux Information Worker User Group) – www.biwug.be has a special evening planned.

This session will cover level 400 topics on SharePoint 2010 Variations. The following topics will be covered: concepts and internals of variations (page vs. site variations), concepts and internals of configuration, variation Timer Jobs internals, different flavors of variations (automatic, manual, different site templates, same site templates, …), the “famous relationships list”, stsadm and PowerShell commands which assist variations, changes between 2007 and 2010.

Demos will be performed while some coding aspects will be covered. It will be shown how variations can be used for other purposes than just implementing multilingual solutions

Pascal Benois is a SharePoint Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft.
He is into SharePoint technologies from the early days and has a strong focus on custom applications, ECM and multilingual deployments.

Date: 21/12/2011 at 18:00, you are welcome at 17:30
Location: Microsoft Belgium offices
Registration link: http://biwug2112-estwhdr.eventbrite.co.uk/

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,biwug,multilingual,variations,microsoft

How to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on Windows 7

2011-11-29T22:23:00.001+01:00

When trying to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on top of Windows 7 you might receive the following error – “Setup is enable to proceed due to the following errors: this product requires Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 …” – to work around this you can use the same procedure with the language pack installation files as the one outlined for the normal SharePoint installation on Windows 7 – a great walkthrough is Setting up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008. Listed below are the exact steps

Copy the language pack installation files to a folder on your computer where you are installing SharePoint and doing your development
Extract the installation files by opening a Command Prompt window, and then typing the following command at the directory location of the folder where you copied the installation files in the previous step.

For SharePoint Foundation 2010 - c:\SharePointFiles\SharePointLanguagePack.exe /extract:c:\LangPack
For SharePoint Server 2010 -c:\SharePointFiles\ServerLanguagePack.exe /extract:c:\LangPack

Using a text editor such as Notepad, open the installation configuration file, config.xml, located in the following path: c:\LangPack\files\Setup\config.xml and add <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/> inside the <configuration> tag
Proceed with the installation using the normal way of working

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps+2010,windows+7,development

Quick Tip – Solving WP7 DatePicker and TimePicker missing icons problem

2011-11-11T14:41:00.001+01:00

To see the correct ApplicationBar icons in the DatePicker and TimePicker, you will need to create a folder in the root of your project called "Toolkit.Content" and put the icons in there. The toolkit provides the necessary icons, but you have to copy them from the PhoneToolkitSample project. They must be named "ApplicationBar.Cancel.png" and "ApplicationBar.Check.png" and the build action must be "Content"!

Source: WP7 DatePicker and TimePicker in depth | API and Customization

Technorati Tags: WP7,WP7BE,windows+phone,silverlight+toolkit,silverlight,development