SharePoint 4 Developers

caml.net.intellisense

Admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:18:00 +0100

Hi folks,

I have been using some extensions and tools in the SharePoint development and also to create SharePoint environments. They can be useful in your daily tasks.

As a SharePoint Best practice whenever possible try creating SharePoint objects utilising schemas (XML). This requires understanding of CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language).

A Visual Studio Extension called caml.net.intellisense intends to facilitate the development by displaying details of the properties via IntelliSense.

The Figure below displays how the custom Intellisense works:

Figure 1 – Intellisense Details

This extension helps if you do not have time to search details of a property on the net. It's worth a look:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/15055544-fda0-42db-a603-6dc32ed26fde

Reference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd588092(v=office.11).aspx

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

ILSpy - Open-Source Tool

Admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:42:00 +0100

Hi there,

A great tool was released this year to replace .NET reflector, that is not free anymore!

ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler:
http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ILSpy.ashx

From now on use this tool to investigate the Intermediate language. It does everything .NET Reflector did.

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

Code Camp & Technology Summit 2011

Admin — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:39:00 +0100

Hi folks,

This last Sunday the Code Camp & Technology Summit took place in Auckland at the University of Auckland Business School.

As usual this event always happens after Teched and is free. Different tracks were available for you to choose. I had the opportunity to check some SharePoint sessions.

More information available: http://www.dot.net.nz/codecamp/default.aspx

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

Teched New Zealand 2011

Admin — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:07:00 +0100

The Teched New Zealand 2011 took place in Auckland this week and I was there!

In my opinion the location of the event, organisation and the level of sessions were excellent.

New Zealand is a small country and there were 3 days of event! Just for comparison purposes in Brazil this year the same event will last 2 days.

Diversity is the word that defines the different tracks created:

Cloud Computing & Online Services
Database & Business Intelligence
Development Tools, Languages & Frameworks
Development Practices & Architecture
Dynamics
Exchange & Lync
Innovation
Office & SharePoint
Security, Identity & Management
Web and User Experience
Windows Client
Windows Phone Development
Windows Server

Let's see next year!

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

2 Years

Admin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:40:00 +0100

Hi folks,

This is something to celebrate, 2 years blogging! Well, I have some comments about that.

Things got really busy for me as a result of my dedication to this blog. I am getting more work, which is a positive thing, but on the other hand I am having less time to create articles and posts.

Since the beginning of this year I have been working on challenging and time-consuming projects. Pretty much during this time I am writing posts based on the experiences (pitfalls, gotchas and workarounds) I am facing along the development.

In my opinion Lessons Learned need to be shared, and that is what I am doing at the moment, which is also a valuable contribution to the SharePoint community. My intention is to keep up doing that plus the creation of articles to demonstrate some Real World scenarios in SharePoint.

At last, but not least I would like to thank the .NET/SharePoint communities that I have an active participation: Codificando.NET and Canal Techshare (former Canal SharePoint). Both communities from Brazil.

Well, let’s keep up the good work!

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

The reCAPTCHA server is unavailable

Admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:30:00 +0100

Hi everyone,

This time I want to talk about the Recaptcha anti-spam. Yes, the one created by Google.

It is great when it works, but it may become a nightmare if you have restrictions in your environment (especially if you are working on SharePoint)

Problem

If you get the message “The reCAPTCHA server is unavailable”, it means that the attempt to connect to Google to validate the Response (the text you have inputted) failed. If you are referencing the binary Recaptcha.dll in your solution I assure you it is going to be very difficult to identify the source of the error.

Solution

Lots of factors may lead to errors. The most common thing is that you may have a proxy in your environment, so you need to set the proxy as a reference in the Recaptcha control.

To troubleshoot that, start by checking the EventViewer, as there will be a message under the “Application” source.

Other unknown factors may possibly affect that, so I recommend you to get the source code from Google:

http://code.google.com/p/recaptcha/source/checkout

Install TortoiseSVN and get the source code, then add it to your solution. By doing this you can debug and check what is going on, otherwise it is going to be very difficult to understand this generic message from the EventViewer.

I hope it helps.

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

New Video Center for SharePoint 2010 Developers

Admin — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 02:25:00 +0100

Hi folks,

A new video center for SharePoint 2010 Developers was released!

It contains short videos about creating custom solutions with SharePoint Online, SharePoint Server, and SharePoint Foundation. Check it out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/hh298298.aspx

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download

Admin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:15:00 +0100

Hi folks,

The Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download.

It includes new features and enhancements, and all the cumulative updates released so far.

Please check more information on the SharePoint Team Blog:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=984

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

Value does not fall within the expected range

Admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:16:00 +0100

Hi folks,

This week I faced an error that was a real pain, and because of that I decided to create this post. To alert others about this.

I was developing a Silverlight Application in SharePoint and all of a sudden started getting the error message: Value does not fall within the expected range.

As I am using the Silverlight Object Model, I decided to see more details about this error through Fiddler. I got this:

Figure 1 – Fiddler analysis

It simply didn’t help at all. Really hard to identify what it is.

Solution

In a different environment the same code was working perfectly fine, so I eliminated any issues with the code.

Luckily (or not), by checking the Lists I found this error message in my view:

This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by the administrator.

In order to solve this “other” issue I was obliged to set the Resource Throttling value up for “List View Lookup Threshold”.

Go to the Central Admin > Application Management > Manage web applications

Figure 2 – Manage web applications

Select the web application that needs to be changed, and then go to General Settings > Resource Throttling

Figure 3 – Resource Throttling

Increase the value of the List View Lookup Threshold, according to the Figure 4:

Figure 4 – List View Lookup Threshold

By saving this change, when I got back to the List, the error message disappeared and hence the issue with application was eliminated! My application just worked fine!

Considerations

Because of the business requirements in my solution, the threshold needed to be increased.

Always evaluate the impact of changing default threshold values in SharePoint.

Be aware of the amount of columns in your Lists. This threshold affects Lookup, Person/Group and Workflow Status fields.

I hope it helps.

References:
http://ranaictiu-technicalblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/sharepoint-2010-error-list-view-lookup.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dinaayoub/archive/2010/04/22/sharepoint-2010-how-to-change-the-list-view-threshold.aspx

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.

Silverlight SharePoint Web Parts

Admin — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:16:00 +0100

Hi folks,

A new Visual Studio 2010 Extension was released by Paul Stubbs recently, which installs Silverlight Web Part templates for SharePoint 2010, called Silverlight SharePoint Web Parts.

The task of creating Silverlight Web Parts is a little bit tricky, because of the required settings to be set against projects in Visual Studio, as you can check at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff798492.aspx

The nice thing about this new extension is that it takes advantage of SharePoint 2010 Power Tools to create Visual Web Parts in the Sandbox.

Installation

1) Install the extension Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools.

Figures 1,2,3 – Installation screenshots of the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Power Tools extension

2) Install the extension Silverlight SharePoint Web Parts.

Figures 4,5 – Installation screenshots of the Silverlight SharePoint Web Parts extension

3) Open up the Visual Studio and check if the extensions are available. Go to Tools > Extension Manager:

Figure 6 – Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010

New Templates

Just as a demo, let’s create an example of each new template and them make some comparisons. Something very simple like a Hello World. Follow the steps below:

1) Create 2 new Silverlight Application projects. Name them as HelloWorld1 and HelloWorld2:

Figure 7 – Creating a Silverlight Application

Figure 8 – Silverlight 4

Note: Do the same for Hello World 2.

The solution should look like this:

Figure 9 – Hello World projects

2) Add the XAML code snippet on the pages MainPage.xaml of both projects:

Code Snippet

<TextBlock Text="Hello World 1!" />

The final XAML should look like this:

Code Snippet

<UserControl x:Class="HelloWorld1.MainPage"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
mc:Ignorable="d">
<TextBlock Text="Hello World 1!" />
</UserControl>

3) Add 2 new Empty SharePoint Projects to the solution. The first one called SilverlightWebPart (Figure 10) and the second one called SilverlightCustomWebPart:

Figure 10 – Empty SharePoint Project

So far our solution should look like this:

Figura 11 – Projetos adicionados

4) For each new added project, Web Parts will be included.

To begin add a Silverlight Web Part to the SilverlightWebPart project. Name it SilverlightWP (Figure 13).

Then select a Silverlight Custom Web Part, which is a Visual Web Part to be hosted in the sandbox. Add it to the SilverlightCustomWebPart project and name it SilverlightCustomWP.

Figure 12 – New templates

Figure 13 – Adding a Web Part

Due to the fact we have more than one Silverlight project, the extension displays a popup to select it according to the Figure 14:

Figure 14 – Selecting a Silverlight project

Note: Select HelloWorld1 for SilverlightWebPart and HelloWorld2 for SilverlightCustomWebPart.

If we had one single Silverlight project, the popup wouldn’t be displayed and an automatic reference to the Silverlight project would be added.

Final Solution

The final result in both Silverlight Web Part projects is the creation of SharePoint Modules, which deploys xap files in the Master Page Gallery, Web Parts in the Web Part Gallery and pages against the Library SitePages.

The main difference of the SilverlightCustomWebPart project is the creation of a UserControl to host the xap file. This is interesting because it allows us to customise the UserControl so we can write javascript to integrate with the Silverlight application.

Check out the final solution:

Figure 15 – Final Solution

Here you get the results:

Figures 16 and 17 – Silverlight Web Parts

References:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e8360a85-58ca-42d1-8de0-e48a1ab071c7
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/8e602a8c-6714-4549-9e95-f3700344b0d9
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/SilverlightTV

Cheers,

Marcel Medina

Click here to read the same content in Portuguese.