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Exchange Public Folders and SharePoint

rastix — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:38:00 +0200

A while ago I did a talk at the Microsoft Techdays in Belgium about migrating from public folders and file servers to SharePoint. In that talk I mentioned the fact that public folders are not dead and that you can continue to use public folders if you really want to. I mentioned the guidance from a blog post at msexchangeteam.com and that guidance has now been updated. You can find the updated guidance here.

The guidance boils down to these main points:

Public Folders have full support for 10 years after the release of the next version of Exchange Server. That is longer than the initial reported date of 2016.
SharePoint is the better option for document sharing and custom applications (e.g. workflow) even if you currently use public folders for this.

For many users, the strength of public folders comes from the fact that there is full Outlook integration. It is easy to drag and drop e-mails as msg files in public folders or share things like calendars and contacts. Although some of these things can be done with Outlook 2007 and SharePoint, the features are not exactly the same. Outlook 2007 does not do two-way sync or allows you to drag and drop e-mails as msg files in document libraries. A tool such as Colligo Contributor is needed if you need those abilities. Colligo Contributor works really well and is worth having a look at.

Another strength of public folders is the built-in replication. SharePoint does not do replication but there are several 3rd party tools that can do it such as those from Infonic.

It would be great if the next version of SharePoint would include features such as replication and better Outlook integration because that would make it even easier to migrate without having to incur extra (potentially high) costs for these extra features.

SharePoint: HP Sizing and Configuration Tool

rastix — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:33:00 +0200

If you want get some guidance for deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 on HP hardware, check out HP's sizer. Just go here and download the tools.

SharePoint: access denied when enabling the publishing infrastructure

rastix — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:41:00 +0200

When you get an access denied after you enable the publishing infrastructure feature on a WSS site, follow the steps in this post. Worked like a charm for me!

SharePoint: Tools Collection by Joris Poelmans

rastix — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:24:00 +0200

Joris Poelmans has a great list of tools to use with SharePoint 2007 (WSS and MOSS). Check it out here.

SharePoint: Reporting Services in Integrated mode and SSL

rastix — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:30:00 +0200

We have a setup with a MOSS 2007 server (web front-end) and a separate SQL Server 2005 SP2. The MOSS server also runs SQL Server Reporting Services and is configured for integrated mode. Integrated mode allows a report designer to publish reports (rdl files) to a document library. Users can then just click on the report in the document library to view the report. Nice idea but there are quite some issues with this setup.

When we setup this environment with Kerberos from client --> MOSS --> SQL Servr 2005 it all works fine. But we do not want Kerberos from the client to the MOSS server, we want basic authentication over SSL. Switching to basic authentication is easy enough: just go to Central Administration and from the authentication providers link you can change the authentication settings. MOSS will then configure the IIS web site appropriately. The user can then logon to MOSS using basic authentication and you can verify that in the event viewer of the MOSS server. Just look for a logon event in the security log for the user where the logon process is ADVAPI.

After switching to basic authentication, the MOSS sites work just fine. But when we click on a report we get an error: "An unexpected error occurred while connecting to the report server. Verify that the report server is available and configured for SharePoint integrated mode".

To explain the error we have to delve a bit deeper in how the integration works by going over the complete request:

User connects to MOSS using basic authentication. In our lab environment the URL is http://sp.newtech.local.
A connection is made from the MOSS server (not the client) to http://sp.newtech.local/_vti_bin/ReportServer/ReportService2006.asmx using the user's credentials. This is the Report Server proxy endpoint as discussed in this article.
A connection is made to the actual RS endpoint as configured with the Reporting Services configuration utility. In our case the endpoint sits in the Default Web Site (separate from sp.newtech.local).

When we switch to basic authentication, it goes wrong at step 2 with a 401 Unauthorized. Of course, the switch to basic authentication also makes http://sp.newtech.local/_vti_bin/ReportServer use basic authentication and that is probably not supported (wild guess because I can't find documentation about it). The solution to this problem is to configure the _vti_bin/ReportServer virtual directory with Integrated Authentication. That is a bit annoying especially when you add front-end web servers later because the SharePoint Timer service won't configure this setting automatically.

UPDATE: this fix will not work for other sites below the root. In our lab, if we have reports at http://sp.newtech.local/sites/othersite/reports then the proxy web service is at http://sp.newtech.local/sites/othersite/_vti_bin/reportserver and that URL will use basic authentication as configured in Central Administration. Because that URL is not even visible in IIS Manager, I cannot switch it to Integrated Authentication. I have not yet found a solution to this problem.

Anyway, the reports now work over basic authentication. When reports need to make connections to other servers with Kerberos, make sure you configure Kerberos appropriately with SPNs and delegation settings. Also see this article.

Time to configure SSL. I won't go in the details about how to do that. Suffice it to say that we used an online certificate authority and configured a certificate on our IIS web site for https://sp.newtech.local. Of course, you need to configure SharePoint's alternate access mappings or you won't get anywhere but I guess you know that already. If you don't, check this. Make sure that the certificate is trusted by the system or step 2 will go wrong again with a failure to validate the certificate!

Now for the piece that is not working (grin). If you configure the SSL URL for a zone other than Default, viewing a report with the SSL URL will not work. It appears that Reporting Services in integrated mode only supports requests if they belong to the Default zone. So we needed to configure the URL https://sp.newtech.local for the default zone and make sure that our users only go to our site using that URL. Fair enough, no big deal there.

That should fix it right? WRONG. When you access the reports from the correct URL (default zone), the following error pops up: "The item '<report URL>' cannot be found. (rsItemNotFound)". For that one, we have not found a fix yet. I will keep you posted if we do. And if you have any ideas, let us know.

UPDATE: the rsItemNotFound error comes from the fact that the Report Server database is not synchronized properly. Redeploying the reports to SharePoint using the https://... URL with Visual Studio 2005 will fix the problem!

This just goes to show that SharePoint and products that integrate with SharePoint such as Reporting Services all are very promising but that they are quite complex to setup and manage. And I must say that the documentation sucks. There is enough documentation allright but not enough precise information about how things exactly work and what is supported and what not.

Watch out with SQL Server maintenance plans for SharePoint databases (2003 and 2007)

rastix — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:51:00 +0200

Just thought you should know of this:

Nintex Workflow 2007

rastix — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:58:00 +0200

If you are looking for an easy way to implement workflows on SharePoint 2007 (WSS or MOSS), take a look at Nintex Workflow 2007 (http://www.nintex.com). To show you how easy it is to build a workflow, let me guide you through an example with an expense note approval. To make it a bit more interesting, I will use an e-mail enabled document libary. The workflow goes like this:

The user e-mails the expense note to expenses@domain.com.
With the appropriate e-mail routing, the e-mail is delivered to SharePoint.
SharePoint drops the attachment in the document libary.
A workflow is kicked off that asks for approval by the user's manager.
When the manager approves, the user is sent an e-mail and the expense note is mailed to finance.
When the manager declines, the user is sent an e-mail with the reason and the expense note is deleted.

By the way, users do not have rights to the document library so they cannot look at other expense notes. That is one of the benefits of using an e-mail enabled document library.

Using an e-mail enabled document library makes things a bit more complicated though because Nintex Workflow 2007 will not be able to automatically determine the user and the user's manager. But because Nintex Workflow 2007 supports things like regular expressions and LDAP queries, we can still make it work.

To build the workflow, you need to install Nintex Workflow 2007 according to the instructions. Check the Nintex website for more information. Once the product is installed, you can create and attach a workflow all without leaving your browser. The settings menu of a document library or list is extended with new items:

I created a new workflow from the Create Workflow item. The first half of the workflow looks like this (click to enlarge):

The first action in the workflow is a regular expression. As discussed above, we need information about who submitted the document. Based on the sender's e-mail address, SharePoint sets the Created By field to the user's account in the form of domain\user. I need the username without the domain for an LDAP query based on the sAMAccountName in Active Directory. With a regular expression that replaces domain\ with an empty string, the username can be put into a Nintex workflow variable. The regular expression I used is: \w*\\. Of course, you can replace \w* with the actual domain name for your environment.

After the retrieval of the username, the action set Get user's manager from AD does the following:

Use an LDAP action to retrieve the manager field of the user object that has a sAMAccountName equal to username.
Use another LDAP action to retrieve the manager's e-mail address so we can ask for approval.

Action sets make it easy to group multiple workflow actions and you can copy and paste them in one step. You can also save them for re-use in other workflows.

An LDAP action looks like the screenshot below (click to enlarge):

After we have the user's manager, the workflow sends an e-mail to the submitter of the expense note with a Send Notification action. The second part of the workflow can now be started (click to enlarge):

This part of the workflow is pretty straightforward. When the manager declines the expense note, the user gets an e-mail with the reason and the expense note is deleted. When the manager approves the expense note, the user gets an e-mail and the expense note is mailed to finance. The expense note is then deleted from the document library. Of course, you could keep the expense note there.

For the end-user, everything is done by e-mail. Because the e-mail confirmations are completely editable, you can make them look how you want. In this case (click to enlarge):

Conclusion

Nintex Workflow 2007 is a good solution to extend SharePoint with workflow capabilities for advanced users. You do not need developer skills to build a workflow but there are some advanced actions such as calling a web service or using SQL queries. Great stuff so definitely check it out. You can easily get a trial version from their website.

New beta of Windows Live Writer with SharePoint support

rastix — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 15:42:00 +0200

There is a new beta version of Windows Live Writer available. In addition to cosmetic changes Windows Live Writer now supports SharePoint 2007 blogs as well. You can also use Word 2007 for blogging to SharePoint but on my system Word 2007 does not accept an https address. No problem with Windows Live Writer so I am now using it as the primary tool for blogging to SharePoint.

Check it out here.

SharePoint 2007: Reporting Services in Integrated Mode and Delegation

rastix — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:31:00 +0200

Since SQL Server 2005 SP2, you can configure SQL Server Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated mode. In this mode you can upload report files (rdl files) and shared data connection files to SharePoint document libraries and work with them from there.

To get to a report, a user just browses to a SharePoint site and selects a report from a document library.

Depending on your requirements, you can install Reporting Services on the same server as your SharePoint server or on a separate server. But if you install Reporting Services on a separate server, you will have to install SharePoint anyway because Reporting Services needs the SharePoint object model and needs to be part of the farm (see this document for more info). If you install Reporting Services on an existing SharePoint server you are deploying side-by-side and should check this document for more info.

To deploy Reporting Services on a SharePoint server side-by-side, just install Reporting Services and do not create a basic configuration. The basic configuration deploys Reporting Services in native mode. After installation, start the Reporting Services Configuration program to configure the server for integrated mode. You will also need the SQL Server Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies. Installation is pretty straightforward and is fully explained in the documentation.

When you run a report, you frequently need to access data on a separate server. If you design a report with a datasource that queries a remote SQL Server, you will have to make sure that your credentials are passed to that server correctly. You basically have two options:

Connect to SharePoint using basic authentication - or -
Connect to SharePoint using Kerberos

You cannot authenticate with NTLM because that protocol does not support double hop.

Basic authentication is the simplest option. You can configure basic authentication with SharePoint Central Administration. When you do so, IIS will be configured appropriately. When a user connects to SharePoint using basic authentication, the password is actually sent to IIS. A connection can be made to a third server with the provided credentials using either NTLM or Kerberos.

The Kerberos option takes more work to implement because it requires service principal names in Active Directory. You configure Kerberos authentication from SharePoint Central Administration and that will also configure IIS for Kerberos. Basically, the NTAuthenticationProviders setting will be set to "Negotiate, NTLM". For more info, see this article.

What are the SPNs you need to set? Well, suppose you have the following scenario where UserX connects to SharePoint (with Reporting Services) and a report needs data from a separate SQL Server:

UserX ----------> SRVSP+RS --------> SRVSQL

UserX will type a name to connect to SharePoint, for example: http://sp.domain.com. For Kerberos authentication to succeed, a Kerberos ticket will need to be passed to IIS. Internet Explorer will request a Kerberos ticket for a service and that service is identified by a service principal name. If you would run a network trace, you would see that Internet Explorer request an SPN in the form of http/<servername typed by user>. So in this case: http/sp.domain.com.

Note: if the website is configured on a different port than 80, do not specify the port on the SPN like http/sp.domain.com:8080. Internet Explorer always uses the FQDN only no matter the port number.

Once the ticket has been acquired, it needs to be passed to the IIS process that hosts the SharePoint web application. In IIS speak, that process is an application pool. An application pool should be configured with a process identity and that should be a domain user account. The SPN of http/sp.domain.local needs to be added to that domain user account. Suppose the domain user account is domain\apppool you would need to use the following command to set the SPN:

setspn -a http/sp.domain.com domain\apppool

The setspn.exe tool is part of the Windows Support Tools on the Windows Server cd. To check that the SPN was set correctly, use the following command:

setspn -l domain\apppool.

Setting the SPN is not enough. For UserX's credentials to be passed from SRVSP+RS to SRVSQL, the domain\apppool account needs to be trusted for delegation. You do this with the Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) MMC snap-in. Where you find this option in the GUI depends on the Active Directory functional level. If it is Windows 2000, the option is in the Account tab. If it is WIndows 2003, the option is in a separate Delegation tab. That tab is only visible for accounts that have SPNs registered.

Once the account is trusted for delegation, you need to make sure that the account has enough user rights on the server (SRVSP+RS) to perform the actual delegation. The user right Impersonate a client after authentication is the minimum required. When the application pool account (domain\apppool) is part of IIS_WPG everything should be fine.

One last step is to make sure that the user account that runs SQL Server on SRVSQL also has an SPN. The SPN needs to be MSSQLSrv/fqdn:1433. In this example: MSSQLSvc/srvsql.domain.com:1433.

Besides the above requirements at the server and domain level, there are some requirements at the client level. The client needs to be able to talk to a domain controller on port 88/UDP (Kerberos) and the website must be in the Intranet or Trusted Sites zone.

Problem with SharePoint 2007 and Office Integration

rastix — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:40:00 +0100

We had a problem with a SharePoint implementation recently. All of a sudden, document icons were missing from document libraries, the New... button did not work, the option "Edit with Microsoft Word" was missing, and so on...

The reason for all of this? Incorrect permissions on docicon.xml on the web front-end server. That file contains definitions of file types, their icon and how these files should be opened. Make sure that the file inherits its permissions from the parent. If only Administrators and SYSTEM have rights, it will not work (obviously).

SharePoint Alternate Access Mappings

rastix — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:08:00 +0100

On the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog, Troy Starr is writing a series of blog posts about alternate access mappings (AAM). AAM is something particularly tricky in a SharePoint deployment that you need to get right. Depending on the complexity of your configuration (intranet, extranet, SSL, ...) you need to configure AAM appropriately.

Check out part 1 and part 2. Part 3 is coming later.

SharePoint and SQL Server 2005 database mirroring

rastix — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 14:06:00 +0100

Microsoft released a new white paper about database mirroring with MOSS 2007 and WSS v3.0. The key point is that you need to perform some actions when a failover happens. You can do these actions manually or implement them using some scripts. You will also have to do some monitoring to know when a failover has happened.

If you are planning to use database mirroring with SharePoint, all I can say is test, test, test!!!

SharePoint and PowerShell

rastix — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:10:00 +0100

On pshell.info, I posted an article about SharePoint and PowerShell that shows how to use PowerShell with stsadm.exe. If you have worked with SharePoint a lot, you probably know stsadm. It is used for command line administration of SharePoint and to obtain information about users, sites, installed web parts, etc...

The problem with stsadm is that it returns XML that can be difficult to interpret and work with. PowerShell can help there with its support for XML as a datatype. Take a look at the article to find out more.

And by the way, credit where credit is due, I got inspired by this post on the Adventures in SPWonderland blog. Great blog so check it out.

Change the SQL server in a MOSS 2007 farm

rastix — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:38:00 +0100

When you deploy MOSS 2007, you need to have a SQL server in place for the configuration database, content databases and various other databases. But what if you need to change that SQL server later? In theory, there are several options:

Use connection aliases and change the alias to use another server.
Use the stsadm utility with the renameserver option.

A connection alias is setup using the SQL Server Configuration Manager utility. I usually install the SQL management tools on the MOSS server which makes the tool available. Normally, you use aliases for security reasons as documented here.

In the diagram above, there is a simple farm with a MOSS server and a SQL server. The SQL server is configured to listen on TCP port 40000 with SQL Server Configuration Manager. The MOSS server is configured to connect to the SQL server using TCP port 40000. To let the MOSS server connect using TCP port 40000, you need to create an alias on the MOSS server. When you create an alias with SQL Server Configuration Manager, it will store the alias definition in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Client\ConnectTo. For the example above, you would find the following value:

Name: sql
Type: REG_SZ
Value: DBMSSOCN,sql.test.com,40000

From practical experience, I do not recommend using an alias to change the SQL server in a MOSS farm. Instead, use the stsadm command as follows:

stsadm -o renameserver -oldservername <oldname> -newservername <newname>

After running this command, restart all services or reboot the server.

Of course, you need to migrate all data from the old SQL server to the new one. You can restore backups to the new server and recreate logins to achieve that goal.

In summary, when you need to change the SQL server in a MOSS 2007 farm, use the stsadm command instead of SQL connection aliases. Use connection aliases to meet security requirements like connecting to SQL with a different port number.

January TechNet Magazine about SharePoint

rastix — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:33:00 +0100

This month's TechNet magazine is devoted to SharePoint. You will find an overview article, information about security features, search and command line administration.

Check it out here.

Creating connectable web parts with the Son Of SmartPart

rastix — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:45:00 +0200

If you have to develop web parts for SharePoint, you have probably heard of the SmartPart. If you want to create web parts with Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0, you can use the Son of SmartPart. The SmartPart and the Son of SmartPart can be downloaded from GotDotNet. This post walks through the steps to create connectable web parts created with Visual Studio 2005 and the Son of SmartPart.

Why use the SmartPart at all? The reason is quite simple. Without it, you have to create web parts completely in code without a designer. If you are not a developer (and even if you are), that is quite frustrating. The SmartPart allows you to easily pick an ASP.NET user control and host that in a web part. The advantage of an ASP.NET user control is that you can use the full power of Visual Studio and create your web part UI with dragging and dropping controls. Although it is possible to use user controls in web parts without the SmartPart, it is more complicated. The SmartPart takes care of some of the plumbing for you so that it even becomes easy to create connectable web parts.

This post is targeted at beginners with some development experience that have not created connectable web parts yet (with or without the SmartPart).

Let's get started. First of all, make sure your SharePoint sites are using ASP.NET 2.0. On a box that's already running Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 SP2, perform the following tasks:

Install the .NET Framework 2.0.
Using IIS Manager, open the properties of the web site that's extended with SharePoint. This is usually Default Web Site. Click the ASP.NET tab and switch to ASP.NET 2.0.
Run the following command: stsadm -o upgrade -forceupgrade -url http://yoururl
If step 3 fails, run the stsadm.exe program from the following path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN. Also, this is only possible with SP2 of Windows Sharepoint Services.

The next step is to install the Son Of SmartPart on the server. Use the instructions that come with the download.

Now, let's build the connected web parts. We will display the list of employees from the SQL Server Northwind database. When the user selects an employee, the orders created by that employee are shown. Fire up Visual Studio 2005 and let's get started:

In Visual Studio 2005, create a new web site using File / New / Web Site...
In the New Web Site dialog, select ASP.NET Web Site and select File System as location.
Use an appropriate path. I used C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\WebSites\SmartPart.
For language, I chose C#.
When you click OK, you will have a new project with a Default.aspx page. You can now start to add user controls.

Create the employee user control. This user control will be used in the Employees web part that will act as the provider. It provides data to the Orders web part.

In the Solution Explorer, right click the project name and select Add New Item...
Select Web User Control and call the file Employees.ascx.
From the toolbox, drag and drop a SqlDataSource on the canvas.
Click the little arrow in the top right corner of the SqlDataSource and select Configure Data Source...
You will now get a wizard to connect to the database and configure your select statement. I will not go through all the answers here because it is quite straightforward. I only selected the following fields: EmployeeID, LastName and FirstName.
Now drag and drop a GridView on the canvas and connect it to the SqlDataSource you configured in step 4 and 5. You can again use the little arrow in the top right corner to do that.
Make sure you select Enable Selection in the GridView Tasks.
Switch to code view by right clicking the canvas and selecting View Code.
Add references to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll and SonOfSmartPart.dll. You do this by right clicking your project in the Solution Explorer and selecting Add Reference... Microsoft.SharePoint.dll you can select from the .NET tab. SonOfSmartPart.dll you will need to select by browsing to it on your file system.
You need to implement the SonOfSmartPart.ICellProviderUserControl interface. Put the cursor behind System.Web.UI.UserControl and type the following: ,SonOfSmartPart.ICellProviderUserControl
You will see a line under the letter S (of SonOfSmartPart). Hover the mouse over it and then click the icon that appears. Choose to implement the interface. Some code will be added automatically.
The property ProviderMenuLabel can be used to return a string that the user will see while connecting the web parts in SharePoint.
The method GetProviderData should return a string. That string will be passed to the connected web part (the consumer). Simple isn't it?

The full source code for the Employee user control should be something like:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Collections;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using SonOfSmartPart;

public partial class Employees : System.Web.UI.UserControl, SonOfSmartPart.ICellProviderUserControl
{
    public string GetProviderData()
    {
        if (GridView1.SelectedIndex != -1)
        {
            // just return the selected datakey which is EmployeeID
            return GridView1.SelectedDataKey.Value.ToString();
        }
        else { return "-1"; }
    }

    public string ProviderMenuLabel
    {
        get { return "Provide employee to..."; }
    }

}

Now you are ready to create the Orders user control. This user control will be hosted in a Son Of SmartPart web part that will act as the consumer. It will consume the string of data (the EmployeeID) from the Employee web part.

Add a new Web User Control and call it Orders.ascx.
Add a SQLDataSource, a GridView and a TextBox. Set the Hidden property of the textbox to true.
The SQLDataSource should again connect to Northwind and this time display the OrderID, CustomerID and OrderDate. You will also create a parameter that takes the parameter value from the (hidden) textbox. You create such a parameter by clicking the WHERE button in the Configure the SELECT Statement page of the Configure Data Source wizard.
Switch to code view and implement the SonOfSmartPart.ICellConsumerUserControl interface. Some code will again be added when you choose to implement the interface.
The ConsumerMenuLabel property should return a string. The user will see the string in the user interface of SharePoint while connecting the consumer web part to the provider.
The SetConsumerData method should be used to receive the data from the provider and do something with it. In this example, the text of the textbox is set to the EmployeeID received from the Employee web part. After that, the GridView's DataBind method is called.

The full source code in Orders.ascx.cs should be:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Collections;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using SonOfSmartPart;

public partial class Orders : System.Web.UI.UserControl, SonOfSmartPart.ICellConsumerUserControl
{
    public string ConsumerMenuLabel
    {
        get { return "Consumes employee from..."; }
    }

    public void SetConsumerData(string data)
    {
        // employeeID is in the data string
        txtEmployeeID.Text = data;
        GridView1.DataBind();
    }
}

You are now ready to deploy the web parts to SharePoint. Each user control consists of two files: an .ascx file and an .ascx.cs file. Copy those files to the usercontrols folder of the web site root that hosts your Sharepoint site. In my case that is c:\inetpub\wwwroot\usercontrols. If the usercontrols folder does not exist, create it. Make sure you copy the files. That way, they will inherit NTFS security rights properly.

Your usercontrols folder should contain: employees.ascx, employees.ascx.cs, orders.ascx, orders.ascx.cs.

Now open your SharePoint site and add a Son Of SmartPart UC web part to your page twice. The two web parts will need to be configured. Use the link in the web part to open the tool pane to select the user control to use from the list.

When you have added the Employees user control to the first web part and the Orders user control to the second, you can connect them. Put the SharePoint page in design mode and use the web part menu of the Employees web part to connect it to the Orders web part.

If everything went well, you should see the orders of the employee you selected.

MOSS 2007 Backup Strategies

rastix — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:46:00 +0200

AvePoint have a whitepaper called "MOSS 2007 Backup Strategies". It contains interesting information about some of the new backup features of MOSS 2007. Not surprisingly, it also discusses AvePoint's backup solutions. AvePoint have interesting backup solutions for Sharepoint (both 2003 and 2007) and are definitely worth investigating if your looking for things like file-level backup and restore, archiving and more.

A direct link to the whitepaper here (pdf).

Sharepoint Workflows Whitepaper

rastix — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:10:00 +0200

For a few months already, I have been busy playing around with WSS 3.0 (Windows Sharepoint Services) and MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server). Slowly but surely, the new features of both products are becoming clearer. I have not been busy fulltime with them so I am sure I only scratched the surface.

One of the more interesting new features is workflow. Recently, a whitepaper has been created that gives more information about workflows. The document describes how the workflows do their job and is an interesting read. Download it directly from here.

To play around with workflows, I suggest you install MOSS 2007 and check out the built-in workflows for document approval. As a next step, I recommend to use Sharepoint Designer and its workflow wizard to build a workflow using a few simple steps. Sharepoint Designer allows you to create quite powerful workflows without any development skills required. If you are a developer, you can of course create your workflows using Visual Studio .NET 2005 and the workflow extensions.

Be aware that workflows are in the base feature set of WSS 3.0. You do not need MOSS 2007 to be able to create workflows. I suggest you install MOSS 2007 because it adds some out-of-box workflows such as document approval on top of WSS 3.0.

Free SharePoint 2007 e-book

rastix — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:49:00 +0200

On Jan Tielen's excellent blog, I picked up this item. There is an e-book you can download with a lot of information about key SharePoint 2007 features. It is primarily written for people with a development background but it is interesting for everyone interested in the new features.

Download here.

Quest discovery wizard for Sharepoint

rastix — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:53:00 +0200

Quest has a free tool to report on your Sharepoint configuration. It provides a Sharepoint Server summary and detail report and displays information about database sizes, users, site collections and more.

The tool's datasheet is here.

Access Sharepoint with a desktop client

rastix — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 14:00:00 +0100

Organice is a desktop application to access Sharepoint with an Outlook-like user interface. From the screenshots, it looks like an interesting product.

I always thought that Microsoft should have provided something like this because a web-based interface is not always the best solution. Same thing for the administration pages, should have been an MMC snap-in!

Reghost pages in Sharepoint

rastix — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:34:00 +0100

If you have worked with Sharepoint a bit, you probably know about ghosted vs. unghosted pages. A ghosted page (default) is a page that is constructed from a template on the front-end server. An unghosted page is a page that is read from SQL Server and not from the front-end template. A ghosted page becomes unghosted when you modify the page with an editor like Frontpage 2003.

There are tools to ghost pages such as Ghosthunter. Ghosthunter is a web part and requires you to put it on a page before you can use it.

It would be nicer to be able to ghost pages from a desktop application. This tool can be used to do just that.

Take WSS folders offline (& in sync) without purchasing anything

rastix — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 16:11:00 +0200

I blogged already about using the old Windows briefcase, but SyncToy is also a good solution. For more info, see: Chris Johnson : Take WSS folders offline (& in sync) without purchasing anything.

Another Sharepoint Trick

rastix — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:41:00 +0200

It is possible to add web parts to default pages that show document libraries and lists. For example, when you are in a SharePoint site, and you go to Documents and Lists and you then click a list or document library, you can add web parts to that page.

Just put the following line in the address bar of Internet Explorer followed by <ENTER>:

javascript:MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane('2');

This opens the toolpane to add web parts to the page. Replace two by 5 to open the import web part tool pane.

More info here: Open List Items in a new window. In the article, Todd Bleeker explains how to use this technique to add a content editor web part with extra javascript to open documents in a new window. Amazing stuff really!

SSL Relief for SharePoint

rastix — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 18:35:00 +0200

If you are familiar with IIS, you probably know it was not possible to combine SSL with host headers. You could not have two or more web sites on the same IP address and port 443 and differentiate between them with host headers. For Sharepoint, that is a problem because it is not supported to bind a Sharepoint extended web site to an IP address explicitly.

Well, it seems there is a solution in IIS 6 on Windows 2003 SP1. There is a catch though: you will have to use wildcard certificates. A wildcard certificate is a certificate for a name like *.baeke.info. Not all CA’s issue this kind of certificate.

More info: SSL Relief for SharePoint

SharePoint Tools from WinApp

rastix — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:42:00 +0200

The link below shows the products from WinApp. One of their tools, Echo, looks promising. We have been looking for a product that can easily change metadata across multiple libraries. It looks like Echo can do this.

Winapp technology: smart tools for SharePoint

Finding a use for the old Windows briefcase

rastix — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 01:01:00 +0200

When I am working on a document that needs to be saved in a Sharepoint document library, I don’t want to work on the server the whole time. I certainly don’t want to do this from home because everytime I save the document, it adds to my upload limit. And it takes way too long if the document grows to >2MB.

So I needed a way to work locally on the document (on my home desktop or company laptop) and when I feel like it, put the document in the document library.

I could work locally and then just upload the document to the library. Or I could open the library as a web folder and drop it in. But there has to be an easier way. After searching a bit on the net, and reading some blogs, I saw a post about using the good old Windows briefcase.

So, what to do?

Map a drive letter to the document library (you knew you could do that right?): net use Y: \\server.domain.com\sites\sitename\doclib can do that for you. Technically, this does not require a VPN connection because HTTP is used. However, since it is not safe, you better do this over a VPN connection. See bottom of this post to know how to map a drive to an https location.
Next, create a briefcase in Windows. I put mine on the desktop.
Drag and drop the document from the drive letter (Y: ) to the briefcase.
Now edit your document in the briefcase and when you want to sync, click the Update All or Update Selection button in the briefcase.

In the briefcase, it looks like this (click the thumbnail):

You can easily see the status and sync when needed. Great!!!

One more thing. If you would like to map a drive letter to https://server.domain.com/sites/sitename/doclib then you should use an application like WebDrive. It is like Novell’s NetDrive application but enhanced with many more features. Novell’s latest version of NetDrive does not even work on my system. But WebDrive works great. Too bad it costs around 50$.

BA-Insight - Enhanced Search for SharePoint

rastix — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 14:28:00 +0200

Take a look at this enhanced Sharepoint search product. When you find a result with Sharepoint, the product can show the location in the document with hit highlighting. Check out the demo at the link below.

BA-Insight - Enhanced Search for SharePoint

ListCharts - a new web part

rastix — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:24:00 +0200

This looks like a great web part to create charts from list data, completely server side. I am going to check this out soon!

Random ramblings from a frustrated man - ListCharts - new web part

I messed up MySite in Sharepoint

rastix — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:55:00 +0100

I was playing around with MySite and imported a data view web part using a .dwp file. After refreshing the page, I got a nasty error. The error stated that the web part referenced a list that does not exist. From that moment on, I could not navigate to the http://…./MySite/default.aspx because it always gave me the same error.

How can you solve this? Just open the page like this: http://…./MySite/default.aspx?contents=1. You then get this (click the thumbnail):

From that page you can delete the offending web part.