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SharePoint Designer 2010 install problem

2010-12-02T04:08:00.001-08:00

Finally I get to start doing a decent sized project in SharePoint Server 2010! I ran into a problem when setting up my development environment though. I'm using Windows Server 2008 R2 on an Oracle Virtualbox VM and its not on our domain so I wanted to install SharePoint Designer 2010 64 bit on it, rather than have a client install.

That should be easy, however after I had downloaded SharePoint Designer from Microsoft and ran the install I kept getting an error complaining about not being able to find SharePoint Designer.WW.cab. I guessed that it must be some problem with the extraction of that file from the exe so I cancelled the installation and then opened an elevated command window, navigated to where I had saved SharePointDesigner.exe and ran the following command:

sharepointdesigner.exe /extract:c:\transfer\extract

I didn't do anything else but re-run the installation and it worked fine that time.

Cheers,

Fraser

Custom SharePoint Timer Job

2010-10-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've been creating a custom SharePoint timer using Andrew Connell's blog as a starting point.

It was driving me nuts for a while but I got it running in the end. His solution is for VS2005 but I'm using VS2008. To get it to build I had to delete the following 2 files:

BuildSharePointPackage.ddf
BuildSharePointPackage.Targets

I had to get rid of these because when you build it looks for makecab.exe which I don't have in my dev environment (Windows Server 2008 R2).

I prefer to use the SPVisualDev add-in for Visual Studio, so I added the SPVisualDev features to my project and dragged the Manifest.xml and Feature.xml files into the new feature folder that I named TaskLoggerJob (the same as the setting in the Manifest.xml file).

I then set the deployment settings:

Right click the project in VS -> SPVisualDev -> Artifact config -> Global config tab -> Assembly build type = GAC

I then built the WSP and deployed the solution using SPVisualDev.

In Central Admin -> Operations -> Solution Management I could then see the solution was globally deployed, however I couldn't see the feature anywhere in order to activate it. This is what is supposed to happen, what I had to do was activate it via STSADM on the command line.

I was now expecting to see it in the Timer job definitions list but it wasn't there and this is where I was confused because I had reset IIS too... I had to run STSADM -o execadmsvcjobs and then re-start the WSS Administration service and to get it to show up and run. The WSS Administration Service re-start is required because like IIS, it needs to be reset to pick up the fact that you have deployed the timer job DLL to the GAC.

See Andrew's blog for further links including a visual how to and explanations on why the timer job is not visible for activation via the UI.

Now that I know how to deploy it properly I'm going to modify it to poll a custom list and send emails.

Notes to self

2010-10-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

\\.\pipe\MSSQL$MICROSOFT##SSEE\sql\query

Href tags being lost when updating a SharePoint Publishing HTML field in code

2010-07-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

I had been banging my head against a wall today over this. Following on from my previous post, I wanted to update a Publishing HTML field to contain some links, however the href tags were being removed when I ran the SPListItem.Update().

The value I wanted to set the field to looked something like this:




This is a description of something with a link

I built up the HTML string in code and set the value of the href attribute to be "publishing-page.aspx", knowing that SharePoint would add the "pages/" for me. You would think this would work, but oh no, this is SharePoint.

I set the value of the field like so:


thePage.CheckOut();

theItem[fldHtml.Id] = newHtml.ToString();
                                                
// stepping through the code, theItem.Update() lost the href attribute altogether
theItem.Update();
thePage.CheckIn("");                                                
                              
thePage.ListItem.File.Publish("");
thePage.ListItem.File.Approve("");
pubWebSite.Update();

What you have to do is set the href attribute to include the site name and not just the page name. So you need to do this:




This is a description of something with a link

Hope that helps someone.

Cheers,
Fraser

Update MOSS publishing page properties programmatically

2010-07-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Today I had a requirement to add an additional property to over 200 MOSS 2007 publishing pages. Since there were over 200 pages I decided to do this in code rather than editing each page manually as this would be much faster and much less dull.

First off I had to add the property to the content type for the page. In this case it was a development code for a group of housing developments, so I added this as a string value and called it DevCode. I then had to think about how I was going to do the update...

Each publishing page obviously has a URL, so I asked the client to provide me with an Excel spreadsheet containing 2 columns matching up the URL for each housing development with the 3 digit code for the development. I then imported the Excel spreadsheet into a list in a SharePoint configuration site that I created earlier.

My plan was to now write a simple .Net windows application that could be run on the web front end server itself. Here is a brief synopsis of what the code does:

Upon clicking a button, the code will create a publishing site instance in order to get the collection of publishing pages. Once that is done we get the list containing the new codes with URLs from the configuration site, the plan being to loop round this list using the URL to find the page we're after in the publishing page collection.

Once the page is dug out of the page collection we need to find the DevCode field that we want to update, set the value to the new DevCode and perform the update on the item. Here is the complete code, C# as ever:


using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing;
using System.Configuration;

string url = string.Empty;
string devCode = string.Empty;

// open a web site
string pubSiteRoot = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PublishingSiteRoot"];
SPSite pubSite = new SPSite(pubSiteRoot);
pubSite.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
using (SPWeb pubWebSite = pubSite.OpenWeb())
{
   if (PublishingWeb.IsPublishingWeb(pubWebSite))
   {
      // get the publishing web instance for this site
      PublishingWeb publishingWeb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(pubWebSite);

      // get the collection of publishing pages
      PublishingPageCollection ppages = publishingWeb.GetPublishingPages();

      string cfgSiteRoot = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConfigSiteRoot"];
      SPSite cfgSite = new SPSite(cfgSiteRoot);
      using (SPWeb cfgWebSite = cfgSite.OpenWeb())
      {
         //loop round the list items in the devcodes list
         SPList liDevCodes = cfgWebSite.Lists["DevCodes"];

         for (int i = 0; i < liDevCodes.ItemCount; i++)
         {
            url = "Pages/";

            SPListItem item = liDevCodes.Items[i];
            SPField fldUrl = item.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName("ows_Title");
            SPField fldNewDevCode = item.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName("ows_DevelopmentCode");
            url = url + item[fldUrl.Id].ToString().ToLower() + ".aspx";
            devCode = item[fldNewDevCode.Id].ToString();

            PublishingPage thePage = ppages[url];

            if (thePage != null)
            {
               SPListItem theItem = thePage.ListItem;
               SPField fldDevCode = theItem.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName("DevCode");

               thePage.CheckOut();

               theItem[fldDevCode.Id] = devCode;

               // update the page, check in and publish
                                   
               theItem.Update();
               thePage.CheckIn("");
               thePage.ListItem.File.Publish("");
               thePage.ListItem.File.Approve("");
               pubWebSite.Update();
            }
            url = string.Empty;
            thePage = null;
         }
      }
   }
}

Annoying single-click to open an item (point to select) behaviour - Windows 7, XP

2010-07-15T01:33:00.000-07:00

I've been experiencing an annoying setting that is applied by our office logon script. All credit to Rob Jones (http://www.motogpblog.com/) for the fix.

The Symptoms:
Check out folder options > click items as follows group
Double-click to open an item (single click to select) is enabled
However, your system is exhibiting the "Single-click to open an item (point to select)" behaviour which is both greyed out and not selected. How odd.

Here’s how to stop your mouse cursor selecting on hover in explorer windows.
1. Follow the instructions in this MSKB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555140
It will guide you to change a registry setting which will activiate the "Single-click..." option that is greyed out. Usual caveats apply, backup your registry etc. Instructions are for XP, but don’t let that stop you.
2. Reboot.
3. Navigate to folder options > click items as follows group
4. Select “Single click...” and apply.
5. Select “Double click...” and apply.
6. Enjoy using your mouse again.

Moodle Web Parts for SharePoint installation on 64 bit OS

2009-12-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

There seemed to be a bit of confusion on the Codeplex forum for the Moodle web parts:

webparts to MOSS on 64 bit server

I managed to get these web parts installed on Windows Server 2008 Standard 64 bit. I believe that it is just the installer that doesn't work on 64 bit.

What I did was I ran the web service only installer first to create the web service. Then I ran the web parts only installer until it fell over and then located the extracted files. The file you are interested in is the .cab file called Moodle.WebParts.cab. I can't remember where it was extracted to but perform a search for that file name before you exit the installer and you will find it.

Then you can run the following stsadm command to install the web parts:

stsadm -o addwppack -filename "\Moodle.WebParts.cab" -globalinstall

Finally you will need to edit the configuration files manually because the installer is obviously not doing it for you. You need to change your settings in C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\wpresources\ProgXimity.Moodle.WebParts\1.5.0.0__09b750dbdb21d78d\moodle.config and also make sure your web service DAL.config settings are correct.

Hope that helps someone.

Cheers

Missing hosts file on SharePoint Index Server

2009-11-11T07:26:00.001-08:00

I encountered a strange thing today after recently installing a MOSS 2007 farm and configuring a dedicated Index server. The event log had the following error:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (95a7c8af-577a-4842-aa3d-ac36fde78c7a).

Reason: Access to the path 'C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS' is denied.

The reason I was seeing that message is because the indexer has been configured to crawl a dedicated web front end (itself) and SharePoint is trying to modify the HOSTS file.

So I went to check the permissions on the hosts file only to discover that it wasn't there. It wasn't hidden or anything, it just didn't exist. I would have expected it to be there and I don't know why it wasn't. To get around the problem though, I just copied the hosts file from the Query server and made sure that the MACHINENAME\WSS_ADMIN_WPG account is able to modify the file.

The OS is Windows Server 2008 Standard x64

Problem with MOSS 2007 installation using config.xml values

2009-10-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

I have been installing a MOSS farm on Windows Server 2008 this week and used a modified version of the farm setup config.xml file in order to control the install with some of my own settings.

Setup command: setup /config Files\SetupFarm\config.xml

Now, when I ran setup I was getting an error saying that the config.xml was invalid and I should fix it the file or re-run the install without a config file.

After taking guidance from TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261668.aspx), my config.xml initially looked something like this:


<configuration>
 <Package Id="sts">
  <Setting Id="LAUNCHEDFROMSETUPSTS" Value="Yes"/>
  <Setting Id="REBOOT" Value="ReallySuppress"/>
  <Setting Id="SETUPTYPE" Value="CLEAN_INSTALL"/>
 </Package>

 <Package Id="spswfe">
  <Setting Id="SETUPCALLED" Value="1"/>
  <Setting Id="REBOOT" Value="ReallySuppress"/>
  <Setting Id="OFFICESERVERPREMIUM" Value="1" />
 </Package>

 <Logging Type="verbose" Path="E:\MossInstallLog\" Template="Office Server Setup(*).txt"/>
 <Setting Id="SERVERROLE" Value="APPLICATION"/>
 <Setting Id="USINGUIINSTALLMODE" Value="1"/>
 <Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="Never"/>
 <PIDKEY Value="blahblahblah"/>
 <INSTALLLOCATION VALUE="E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\"/>
 <DataDir Value="E:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\"/>
<configuration>

Note the INSTALLLOCATION node is capitalised like it is in the TechNet example. I found that once I changed this to InstallLocation, I no longer got the error when running setup. However, although I no longer got the error, the setup wizard still wanted to install on the C: drive, so the setting wasn't picked up from the config file.

I then tried running setup on another farm server but this time changing the capitalised PIDKEY value to Pidkey. The wizard did not pick up the license key and prompted me for it.

I'm not really sure why this is happening. Maybe something to do with Windows Server 2008? Anyway, if you're getting an error telling you that your config.xml is invalid and to re-run setup then this could be the cause.

Cheers,

Fraser

Easy MOSS web part deployment

2009-07-29T02:20:00.000-07:00

When developing web parts for SharePoint, deploying them to test your builds is time consuming, dull and the front-end tools often crash, so I've started using a script to speed things up using STSADM.

@set PATH=S:;%PATH%
stsadm -o retractsolution -name .wsp -immediate -allcontenturls
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o deletesolution -name .wsp -override
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o addsolution -filename
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs
stsadm -o deploysolution -name .wsp -immediate -allcontenturls -allowGacDeployment -allowCasPolicies
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

My path S: is set to the STSADM location which will be C:\Program Files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin on your machine.

You should save this as a cmd file and make sure you run it as Administrator. You also need to make sure the Windows SharePoint Services Administration service is running or the execadmsvcjobs steps won't work.

You can run this script as part of your deployment from Visual Studio apparently but I've not tried that yet.

Another thing you can do to just upgrade the solution is this:

stsadm -o upgradesolution -name .wsp -filename -immediate -allowCasPolicies -allowGacDeployment
stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

Cheers,

Fraser

Presence indicator not working in Colleagues web part (or anywhere in SharePoint)

2009-07-07T05:13:00.000-07:00

I noticed that the presence indicators in my Colleagues web part on my My Site were always set to orange and therefore not reflecting people's true status. I googled the problem and found this blog... He reckons its down to the IE plugin being corrupted.

To fix it:

Close all IE windows.
Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\ and rename the file called name.dll to name.dll.bak
Open a SharePoint page in IE and Office 2007 will reconfigure itself.

Cheers,

Fraser

Moodle Integration Solution Installation for MOSS 2007

2009-03-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on a MOSS project where the client is a heavy user of a Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE). One of the requirements involves including functionality to allow users to access Moodle from their SharePoint My Site.

On Codeplex there is the Moodle Integration Solution (MIS) for SharePoint (http://www.codeplex.com/Moodle2003WP). This includes a .Net web service and a web part library that allows users to view their Moodle courses, other Moodle users online and exchange documents between SharePoint and Moodle.

I installed the web service and web parts (version 1.5) on my MOSS box and added the MyCourses web part to a My Site. The web part threw an unhandled exception when it was run that didn't tell me much, so I had to investigate...

If you're reading this, you may already know that the installation guide and the installer package are a wee bit confusing when it comes to installing the MIS web service. The installer wants to install the web service in a virtual directory under the site running on port 80 - i.e. if you're installing this on your SharePoint box it will want to install it under your main SharePoint installation website (if you've installed SharePoint with the default). The MIS installation guide says create a new website next to your SharePoint website in IIS, but the installer wants to do something else, therefore it is very confusing.

Anyway, you can't install it in the SharePoint website because the SharePoint website security is different to the web service security, so you need to create another website in IIS. I created mine running on port 8080 and called it MoodleIntegrationWS. All I did was add a new website and start it. I didn't touch any of the IIS settings for the website as the MIS installer would create these settings for me.

During the installation process, when the installer gets to the web service installer location, leave the name blank (delete the name that is pre-populated) and change the port from 80 to wherever you've created your new website. The installer will then set up the web service correctly and all will be well in the world.

Once all that is complete, you should consider allowing single sign on into Moodle from the Moodle web parts. You can do this by asking the Moodle administrator to configure NTLM authentication (http://docs.moodle.org/en/NTLM_authentication). This authentication is supported in version 1.5 of the MIS.

Cheers,

Fraser

If you can ride here you can ride anywhere...

2009-02-01T04:40:00.000-08:00

My mates and I have said this before, if you can snowboard in Scotland you can do it anywhere. I hear lots of people complaining about the weather and conditions here but I think they only serve to make you a stronger rider. If you can be shredding away on hard packed snow that turns to ice then a bit of grass and a hidden rock and still stay up then when you go away on that hard earned holiday to somewhere with guaranteed snow, you'll be totally fine.

Talking of hard-earned holidays, we learned yesterday that the company we were supposed to be going to the freestyle camp in Avoriaz with in April has gone bust! :( Chalet Snowboard (CSb) the company is called. So gutted, I can't even put it into words. Not just about the deposit we may have lost but because we were going to be shredding with pros who were going to teach us stuff, show us the best places to carve it up and then return at night to the luxury chalet with hot tub, meals cooked for us etc.

Very very very disappointing. We booked our flights separately with British Airways and they're still valid so we need to find some alternative accommodation pronto. We're not limited to Avoriaz I suppose, as we'll be flying into Geneva so we can go pretty much anywhere. I know this blog has very few hits so far but if anyone reads this and has some suggestions we can try for accommodation then please leave a comment.

We went up to Glencoe last Saturday, which means my shred comrades and I have done all 5 snowsport areas in Scotland now. It was a bit icy but it softened up a bit as the day went on. It was a bit windy at times and the upper areas of the mountain were closed as it was too windy, so we'll need to go back there again when there is some fresh stuff to tear up.

Here are some pics of the lads and myself. As usual when you take a photo of some breathtaking scenery it doesn't have the same impact as real life...

Mr Greg (he's not breathtaking, the view is further down)

Aussie Rob and myself

The view

Paul chillaxin

More view

And some more view

Rob, me & Greg aka 'The Baby Faced Shredder'

It's been seriously dumping this week in the Cairngorms so we're going there on Saturday bright and early. There is apparently 2-4 feet of fresh powder and its forecast to keep snowing tomorrow and on Saturday. They better keep the road open or I'm gonna flip out.

Snowboarding Last Week

2009-01-29T13:11:00.000-08:00

Myself, Grom, Young Grom, Greg and Paul are going to head north to Aviemore on Saturday and do some shredding up in the Cairngorms. We took a day off and went there in the middle of last week and for most of the day it was fantastic, if a wee bit windy, although having said that, the wind seemed to be collecting the snow in the right places.

The day started off as a bluebird ("let's do this! YEAH!" was the shout, hahaha) and we got the funicular up to the Ptarmigan and spent the whole day up there with really nice and soft wind blown pow. It was like sugar and the snowpack was decent.

It's not been long since I got my new stick (a Ride DH 155) and she really is sweet to ride. This was our 2nd date and all was going well until I noticed a 2 inch long crack in the top layer of the board after a really insignificant fall. I haven't even hit a kicker with her yet so I was surprised and disappointed to see she was damaged so soon. Needless to say I took the board back to Boardwise the other day and they are going to send it back to Ride. I should find out whether or not they will replace it under warranty next week. I don't anticipate any problems as it hadn't had any abuse whatsoever.

We had lunch in the Ptarmigan Station where the food was a decent canteen standard but, as with all mountain restaurants, it was served up at near Michelin star prices. I'm told this is something to do with supply and demand... haha. I'm going to eat a huge breakfast and take Mars bars when we go again this weekend.

After lunch we got back on it and the weather changed in the blink of an eye. It is really scary how quickly the weather closes in on you when you're up there as later on in the afternoon the wind really picked up and the cloud cover was all over us like a cheap suit. We braved it until we couldn't see any more before getting the funicular back down. I really need to buy yellow goggle lenses this week as I was like riding like Stevie Wonder with the mirrored ones I had on.

Next week we are due an icy blast from a Russian weather front but that won't arrive until Sunday. Lets hope the Scottish weather holds out for us this Saturday though.

Installing SQL Server Reporting Services

2009-01-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

I've been installing SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services today on my Vista laptop, and as with many Microsoft products it wasn't as straightforward as it should've been. When you run the set up program you may notice that the Reporting Services option does not appear in the Feature Selection dialogue box. The reason I found for this not appearing in my case was because I had not configured IIS 6.0 correctly.

What I needed to do was this:

In Control Panel, click Programs, and then double-click Programs and Features.
In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Click Turn Windows features on or off.
In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Internet Information Services, expand Web Management Tools, expand IIS 6 Management Compatibility, and then click to select the following check boxes:

IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility

Expand World Wide Web Services, expand Application Development Features, and then click to select the following check boxes:

ASP.NET
ISAPI Extensions
ISAPI Filters

Expand Common HTTP Features, and then click to select the following check boxes:

Default Document
Directory Browsing
HTTP Errors
HTTP Redirection
Static Content

Expand Security, and then click to select the Windows Authentication check box.

I then re-ran the SQL Server set up program and installed Reporting Services.

More info here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934164

First Post

2009-01-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

This is my first post, so I’m just going to say hello and welcome. I’ve started this blog primarily to try and keep record of some of the problems I encounter while working in IT and hopefully help you out if you are tearing your hair out over something technical. If you’ve got women troubles then ask my dad. When I say IT, more specifically for me this means C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server and SharePoint Server 2007.