@sharebrad

The Problem Steps Recorder is the solution to the problem

2013-02-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

So, my blog has been very quite lately...The reason is simple, I have been buried under mountains of documentation in the planning phase of a new project and didn't feel the need to blog about how to create a PowerPoint presentation or how to properly apply Headings and Citations to a Word document.

With that being said, this project is very exciting and I can't wait to get my hands on a Dev server and go nuts!

So with the beginning of any new project there is excitement, but there is also that little voice in the back of your head that says, "The documentation isn't over! You owe me a "Configuration/Install Guide". Call it what you will, but this jewel of a document is probably every Developers worst nightmare on any project. Inevitably, there is always someone who wants you to record your every move and make sure that there is a document (that no one will likely ever crack open) that they can refer to if they need to build the environment from the ground up.

Now, just because you don't like it or think it is silly, there is some merit to having this document and I can see how it can be important for auditing and supportability in the future. So enough of the ranting...the real reason I am writing this post is to tell you about something that was just brought to my attention that makes building a Configuration Guide a lot easier.

So, first lets talk about the way we usually do this...open up Word or OneNote and type out, Open this.... (insert Screenshot) Then Click on this (insert Screenshot) then click on this (insert Screenshot) then type this (insert Screenshot) then....blah blah blah....there has got to be an easier way! Have you ever wish there was a way to record your clicks in screenshots and documented steps? Well here it is...a (very) hidden jem of the Windows 7 operating system! the Problem Steps Recorder!

The Problem Steps Recorder in the Windows 7 operating system is a feature that enables users to record their interactions with an application and provide a detailed screen-by-screen view with accompanying information.
Since this tool is so hard to find i used it to show you how to find it, here is the result (you may have to download a copy)

If you would rather the short answer just use the search in Windows 7 Start menu to find it by searching for "Record Steps"

How to: Insert AsemblyFileName in C# Code

2012-09-15T00:41:00.000-04:00

Ever get burned by a cached assembly? I just did recently and it was no fun.

There is nothing worse than troubleshooting an issue you have already resolved. In my case I was working on a Custom Retention Policy and after troubleshooting for far longer than I would like to admit, I realized that when I initiated the retention policy date calculation it would work fine (this uses the W3WP.exe process) but when the Expiration Policy Timer Job ran it didn't work as expected (that timer job runs under the context of the OWSTimer.exe) so the OWSTimer had cached my code and was running old code. I restarted the OWSTimer and just like magic all was well.

So I posed a question to myself, how can I know exactly what version of your code I am running? Sure you can right click on the assembly and check the properties there but that doesn't mean that is what the timer service is running for example. Entering a version number in your code can be a great way of ensuring that you are running the latest and (hopefully greatest) version of your code.

This is what I ended up with...this will take the AssemblyFileVersion from the AssemblyInfo.cs file:

   1: using System.Reflection;

...

Version fileVersion = new Version("0.0.0.0");
AssemblyFileVersionAttribute[] fileVersionAttributes = (AssemblyFileVersionAttribute[])Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetCustomAttributes(typeof(AssemblyFileVersionAttribute), true);
if (fileVersionAttributes != null && fileVersionAttributes.Length > 0)
{
    fileVersion = new Version(fileVersionAttributes[0].Version);
}
string workflowVersion = "Workflow Version: " + fileVersion;

You can then take that string and output it in a ULS Log entry for example.

Next step...Use TFS to increment the AssemblyFileVersion durring the build ;)

Unable to find the default edit form for list...

2012-08-29T21:30:00.000-04:00

So Exporting a Site as a Template and Importing it into Visual Studio can be very useful but only if it works!

I was trying to use this method to create a List and a Library Instance so I could include it into my existing solution. I did this and it appeared as though everything worked well until I tried to upload a document in the library or create a new list item...then I would get a nasty error about

"Unable to find the default edit form for list My List"

So I looked back in the definition and for the list there was this SharePoint Module inside that was named 'Listslist_name_here_pages'and had a Elements.xml inside it with some information about the DispForm, NewForm and EditForm...

Perfect, so for the list I included this module just as it was in the other solution and low and behold it worked...but then the Library didn't have a module inside it...WTF!!! Then some more snooping lead me to see that there was a Modules folder that had 4 Modules with the corresponding names each with their own different Elements.xml files!

LibraryNameForms_1033_STS_doctemp_word
LibraryNameForms_Features_DocumentLibrary_doclib
LibraryNameForms_pages
LibraryNameFormsMy Custom ContentType_1033_STS_doctemp_word

NASTY!!!

So, being a slave to SharePoint I set out to duplicate these four modules just as they were in the imported solution...no dice...but then I got to thinking about how this works and I snooped into the Scheme.xml of the list instance and found this....

<Forms />

What?!? that's not right...so I blew away all my precious modules I worked so hard on and switched the above one line in the Scheme.xml for this...

<Forms>
<Form Type="DisplayForm" Url="DispForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
<Form Type="EditForm" Url="EditForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
<Form Type="NewForm" Url="NewForm.aspx" SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" WebPartZoneID="Main" />
</Forms>

WOW! Its magic! just like It should be...and a much nicer, cleaner solution.

More information about the Scheme.xml can be found here

SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard "Configuration Failed"

2012-08-21T20:58:00.000-04:00

Ever spent a full day (or more) trying to get SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard to work properly?

It seems like every time I have to run this thing it fails with that lovely "Configuration Failed" error message...and this is of course after 15-20 min and 92.57% or whatever random percentage it pulls out of the air.

You can dig through the logs, the "Upgrade-datestamp-timestamp-randomnumber-error.log" log file often has much more informative information in it that the "PCDiagnostics_datestamp_timestamp_randomnumber.log" that the wizard recommends.

So, after that then what?

Never fear, Command Prompt is here!

Run this command from a SharePoint 2010 Management Shell prompt and 9 times out of 10 it will work...I don't know why i don't just do this to start with.

PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force

there are many different switches you can add to this command all of which may or may not help but this is the one that i use the most.

HEY!!! Who changed my Helper.dll?

2012-07-31T23:32:00.000-04:00

Ever want to share a class in Visual Studio without having the overhead of the good 'ol "Helper.dll"?

Try this instead...
Adding an Existing Item as a Link

It is a very rarely used and under appreciated feature of Visual Studio that I didn't know existed until recently.

Here is why this is good:

You have less DLL's
You still have the ability to share classes.
When you compile your code you always have the latest version of the class unlike a copy of the class.
Once you compile, that build will always have that version of the class until you build again.
Sharing Is Caring...OK, OK, I am done

Downfalls:

I can't think of one can you?

Thanks to my coworker and this blog post for helping me realize this possibility.

Ode to SharePoint Designer

2012-07-27T21:01:00.000-04:00

Just a little fun here...

You have the right to use SharePoint Designer,
Anything you save or modify will not be backed up.
Some unexpected results are to be expected.
If you cannot afford a Developer, then you may not wish to proceed.
Do you understand these flaws as I have described them to you?

Just kidding SPD...but seriously, stop trying to help...if I wanted your silly __designer:Preview tags then i would ask for them.

If you got here via search looking for answers I am sorry...try these sites:
SharePoint Designer 2010 inserts "__designer:Preview" and "__designer:Values" attributes upon reopening of Master Pages
Sharepoint Designer 2010 adding/generating __designer preview tags – a fix to solve this issue

SharePoint 2010 Event ID 6482 Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance

2012-07-27T20:53:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen this error in your ULS and wondered what it was?

SharePoint 2010 Event ID 6482 Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance

I used to always ignore it because although it showed up once a minute in the logs SharePoint Search worked fine.

I got curious about it and decided to do some digging which lead me to this great article by Jeff DeVerter that explained what the issue was and how to resolve it.

And now thanks to Jeff, my ULS has been error free for 3 days!

Visual Studio build fails: unable to copy exe-file from obj\debug to bin\debug

2012-07-27T20:43:00.000-04:00

My colleague fought this error for 2 days and finally found out what was causing this issue.

A little background is he was building a Console Application in Visual Studio to interact with SharePoint 2010.

He could rebuild this project many times over and work with it, debug it with no problems.

But, if he tried to run the .exe from windows explorer and then try to rebuild he would get the following error:

Error 4
Unable to copy file "obj\x64\Debug\Program.exe" to "bin\x64\Debug\Program.exe". 
Access to the path 'bin\x64\Debug\Program.exe' is denied.

After many failed attempts to narrow down the issue and trying many different solutions without avail finally he found a working solution.

It all has to do with a tiny little Windows Service called Application Experience.
The description of this service helps you understand why this service is important to what our issue is:

Processes application compatibility cache requests for applications as they are launched

Make its Startup Type Automatic and Start this service and you should be good to go.

SharePoint 2010: No Site Content Types Link

2012-07-16T21:16:00.000-04:00

One of the most discuraging issues you will find when working with Content Types in SharePoint is a very simple issue. The Site Content Types link in the breadcrumb is not a link at all. Instead it is some grayed out text that irritates you every time you try an click on it.

So I got tired of trying to do this and thought I would take matters into my own hands.

Here is what I came up with:

function AddContentTypeLink() {
   var spans = document.getElementsByTagName('h2');
   var stringToMatch = ' Site Content Types ';
   for (var i = 0; i < spans.length; ++i) {
     if (spans[i].innerHTML.indexOf(stringToMatch) != -1) {
       spans[i].innerHTML = spans[i].innerHTML.replace(stringToMatch ,"<a href='/_layouts/mngctype.aspx'>" + stringToMatch + "</a>");
       break;
     }
   }
}
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('AddContentTypeLink');

Add this to an existing JavaScript file you have on the go (or in a CEWP on the settings pages where it exists if you are desperate)

If all worked properly you should be left with this:

It may not be pretty but it works well...

If you are working in a different language you can change the string variable to whatever it translates to (French for example is " Types de contenu de site " (don't forget the leading and trailing space!)

SharePoint 2010 Search Refinement Panel - Bad Border

2012-07-07T00:37:00.000-04:00

If you have ever spent time customizing or even just using SharePoint's Search Center then i am sure you have seen this annoying little box that shows up when you have no refinements. It also shows up when you get no results back from a query like this:

So, what is this? You may ask...Well it is the border of the Refinement Panel DIV which has padding-bottom: 5px and padding-top: 7px and it looks good when there are refinement items but not so much when it is empty...

Well that's great but what can we do?
Well, if you already have a JavaScript file and a jQuery refference, then throw this in there and it will hide it when it is blank...

 function HideEmptyRefiner() {  
      if ( $('.ms-searchref-main').children().length == 0 ) {    
        $('.ms-searchref-main').hide();   
      }  
 }  
_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('HideEmptyRefiner');

So, what if you don't want to run jQuery on your site? Well don't worry i won't leave you hanging...you can achieve the same result with plain old JavaScript but as always it is 10 times harder!

I am not going to go into the details (you can find those here on this great blog about the issue) but you have to be careful on how you look to see if there are any childNodes. You can't just do a simple parent.childNodes.length because SharePoint was so kind as to leave a nice little XML comment in this DIV:

 <!-- l version="1.0" encoding="utf-8 -->

Further more, the childNodes length count is not always consistent cross-browser

So, by using the knowledge gained from the blog above and his example as a starting point this is what i came up with...

 var kids;  
 var realKids;  
 var parent;  
 var i = 0;  
 function hideEmptySearchDiv() {  
   realKids = 0;  
   parent = document.getElementById("SRCHREF");  
   kids = parent.childNodes.length;  
   while (i < kids) {  
     if (parent.childNodes[i].nodeType != 3 && parent.childNodes[i].nodeType != 8) {  
       realKids++;  
     }  
     i++;  
   }  
   if (realKids == 0) {  
     parent.style.display = 'none';  
   }  
 }  
 _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('hideEmptySearchDiv');

I found that the nodeType of the comment was 8 so I excluded that, then applied the same "if none found hide the div" logic as I used in my jQuery example above.

Enjoy! I hope this helps some one.

SharePoint 2010: Value does not fall within the expected range

2012-07-04T13:06:00.002-04:00

Today I was working on a very annoying issue related to some custom code we are using to look-up information from a list.

All of a sudden when logged in as a non-Site Collection Administrator (Site Owner) our code was erroring out on this line:

 SPFieldUserValueCollection siteContacts = new SPFieldUserValueCollection(web, item["Site Contacts"].ToString());

The error was basically saying that the 'Site Contacts' field did not exist in the list even tough it did.

Come to find out that this issue was not related to the list at all but rather the way that SharePoint gets list items. It does it in a CAML Query type of way thus the list item threshold of 8 columns applies and this column was magic number 9.

So because the list item threshold does not apply to Site Collection Admins the look-up worked fine for them but not for anyone else.

Lesson learned, increase the List View Threshold, perform a specific query on the list using SPQuery and specify less than 8 ViewFields something like this or override the limit like this:

 query.QueryThrottleMode = SPQueryThrottleOption.Override

Or, in our case, we took a different (3rd) approach.

You can disable the throttling on a list by list basis so we opted for this PowerShell script:

 $web = Get-SPWeb http://your.site.com  
 $list = $web.Lists["My List"]   
 $list.EnableThrottling = $false  
 $list.Update()

We knew this 'special' list is not going to get out of hand and we didn't want to change the threshold for the whole web application.

Hide something from the SharePoint Dialog Box

2012-06-28T16:32:00.003-04:00

Today I went onto a SharePoint site to Upload A file and saw this in the Dialog Box to upload a file.

Notice the Support Div That is floating on the Right of the page but then is also on the Dialog Box.

SharePoint uses the same Master Page for Dialog Boxes as it does for your site so if you add something to the master page it will most likely show up in your dialog boxes as well.

To resolve this issue you need to know about a "special" CSS class SharePoint uses.

It is s4-notdlg Any item in the master page that has this class is stripped out of the dialog boxes automatically by SharePoint.

So instead of like this:

 <div title="Support" class="supportTab " id="supportTab">  
 Support  
 </div>

It should be like this:

 <div title="Support" class="supportTab s4-notdlg" id="supportTab">  
 Support  
 </div>

Extra credit if you add the noindex so search doesn't find the word Support on every page in your Site:

 <div title="Support" class="supportTab s4-notdlg noindex" id="supportTab">  
 Support  
 </div>

list.Fields["Internal Name"] does not exist

2012-06-27T15:54:00.001-04:00

Got a quick and dirty one for you.

A co-worker of mine came to me with a simple but weird issue.
This chunk of code wasn't working:

 string property = "DocumentSetDescription";  
 if (list.Fields.ContainsField(property))  
 {  
   if (list.Fields[property].Type == SPFieldType.Invalid)  
   {  
     //Code Here  
   }  
 }

But it was throwing an error on the second 'if' statement basically saying the Field did not exist.

So you would think that if the first if statement was true then the second must be OK as well but it wasn't.

Come to find out it has to do with the way that the SPList.Fields Property looks up fields.

if you use .Fields.ContainsField(value) it looks it up by the internal name of the field (which were had) but if you use .Fields[value] it tries to look it up by either the GUID, DisplayName or the iIndex.

So if you try to look up a column by the Internal Name and it isn't the same as the Display Name then it will fail.

In order to avoid this we refined the if statement to be more like this:

 string property = "DocumentSetDescription";  
 if (list.Fields.ContainsField(property))  
 {  
   if (list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(property).Type == SPFieldType.Invalid)  
   {  
     //Code Here  
   }  
 }

You learn something new every day...

Use SharePoint 2010 JavaScript (ECMAScript) Client Object Model to check current users permissions

2012-06-14T11:30:00.000-04:00

The JavaScript Object Model is a very powerful tool to a SharePoint Developer if you know how to use it properly. Unfortunately there isn't that much information out there about it and searching for examples often leads you to C# style SharePoint Object Model code which is similar but not the same...

If you are new to it and want to learn more or play around with some working examples check these out!

I struggled to get this to work for longer than I would like to admit so I thought I would post it here to alleviate future headaches and in hopes that it helps someone else.

My requirement was to check the permission of the current user using The JavaScript Client Object Model and do "something"

So here is what I ended up with.

 <script type='text/javascript'>  
  ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(checkifUserHasEditListItems, "sp.js");  
 function checkifUserHasEditListItems ()   
 {  
  context = new SP.ClientContext.get_current();  
  web = context.get_web();  
  this._currentUser = web.get_currentUser();  
  context.load(this._currentUser);  
  context.load(web,'EffectiveBasePermissions');  
  context.executeQueryAsync(Function.createDelegate(this, this.onSuccessMethod), Function.createDelegate(this, this.onFailureMethod));  
 }  
 function onSuccessMethod(sender, args)   
 {  
  if (web.get_effectiveBasePermissions().has(SP.PermissionKind.editListItems))  
  alert('User has editListItems');  
  else  
  alert('no dice');  
 }  
 </script>

You can dump this in a CEWP or include it in a .js file that you already have...either way it will prompt you with an alert (obviously the alert is just a placeholder for wonderful things to come)

Visual Studio Post-Build GacUtil.exe with error handling

2012-06-12T15:39:00.001-04:00

If you have ever had to deploy a solution to the GAC then you will love this Post-Build Command.

I found the original here by Dave Chestnutt and made it work for me:

echo POSTBUILDSTEP for $(ProjectName)
xcopy "$(TargetPath)" "$(SolutionDir)$(OutDir)" /i /d /y
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
xcopy "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).pdb" "$(SolutionDir)$(OutDir)" /i /d /y
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
echo GAC of: "$(SolutionDir)$(OutDir)$(TargetFileName)"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\x64\gacutil.exe" /i $(TargetPath)"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed
REM Exit properly because the build will not fail
REM unless the final step exits with an error code
goto BuildEventOK
:BuildEventFailed
echo POSTBUILDSTEP for $(ProjectName) FAILED
exit 1
:BuildEventOK
echo POSTBUILDSTEP for $(ProjectName) COMPLETED OK

Debugging and Troubleshooting the Search UI

2012-06-08T01:21:00.000-04:00

Here is a great article by Agnes Molnar that would have helped me out today had I known about it earlier! This article goes into great detail about the moving parts to a SharePoint 2010 Search Results page and how to make it your own.

http://www.sharepointblog.co.uk/2012/06/debugging-and-troubleshooting-the-search-ui

Add Search Refinement Item Count

2012-06-07T01:02:00.001-04:00

A quick and impressive enhancement to the SharePoint Search Refinement Panel is to allow it to show the item count next to each of the refiners.
You can follow this TechNet article on how to achieve this solution.
This is what you will end up with:

SharePoint 2010 Custom Search Refiner for Contentclass

2012-06-07T00:52:00.002-04:00

My client pointed out Yaroslav Pentsarskyy's post on Search Refiners last week and asked me to look into it.
So I implemented his solution and although it worked well, my client and I wanted more granularity for this search refiner, so I got to thinking that one thing that would work well would be the ContentClass property that holds such values as STS_Site and STS_ListItem_Announcement etc.

So I dusted off my XML Editor, cracked open the FilterCategories from the Refinement Panel (don't forget to un-check use default configuration, and went to work and here is what I ended up with:

<Category
   Title="Content Class"
   Description="Filter by contentclass"
   Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"
   MetadataThreshold="0"
   NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="2"
   MaxNumberOfFilters="0"
   SortBy="Custom"
   ShowMoreLink="True"
   MappedProperty="contentclass"
   MoreLinkText="show more"
   LessLinkText="show fewer" >
   <CustomFilters MappingType="ValueMapping"
     DataType="String"
     ValueReference="Absolute"
     ShowAllInMore="False">
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Web Pages">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_WebPageLibrary</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Announcements">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Announcements</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Contacts">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Contacts</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Disucssions">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_DiscussionBoard</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Documents">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_DocumentLibrary</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Events">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Events</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Gantt Tasks">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_GanttTasks</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="List Items">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_GenericList</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Links">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Links</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Pictures">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_PictureLibrary</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Surveys">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Survey</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Tasks">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_Tasks</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="XML Forms">
       <OriginalValue>STS_ListItem_XMLForm</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
     <CustomFilter CustomValue="Sites">
       <OriginalValue>STS_Web</OriginalValue>
     </CustomFilter>
   </CustomFilters>
 </Category>

Note: if you are concerned about Multilingualism then know that by telling the Refinement Panel Web Part to not use the default configuration you are hard-wiring a bunch of words that are used here (like 'show more' and 'show less') so keep that in mind.

Thanks again to Yaroslav Pentsarskyy for the mention on his new post about my resolution after I sent it to him.

Welcome to my blog

2012-06-07T00:07:00.000-04:00

Hello All, Welcome to my blog.

I am a SharePoint Developer who lives in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. I work for StoneShare, we are a SharePoint consulting company specializing in SharePoint and only SharePoint.

I have been riding the SharePoint rollercoster since the SPS 2003 days and loving every bit of it.

Most of my posts will be contextual to what I am currently working on but I am open to suggestions on future posts.

You can follow me on twitter at sharebrad