Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package: June 4, 2007

Creating custom 404 and landing pages (easy to remember URLs that are redirected) in SharePoint

This post is about how to create custom landing pages (www.mysite.com/products or www.mysite.com/newsletter) that directs the visitor through and easy to remember URL to any page  in your deep site hierarchy. It also contains the approach how to create custom 404 “Page not found” pages.

Locking Down Custom SharePoint Assemblies

Regardless of its a WebPart, or a client application that is going to integrate with SharePoint, for the love of all that is great and holy, lock down your custom developed assemblies, and don’t blindly give permission to things that probably shouldn’t have elevated permission sets.

The best way to do this is to start from scratch, and pretty much work your way up. So, you want to begin with this:

Streamlining Records Management Using SharePoint Server 2007 Workflow

Learn how the LCA Corporate Records Management team at Microsoft used Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office InfoPath 2007 to create an efficient inventory tracking solution.

Change a Filename using a Workflow

One of the questions that has arisen in our use of SharePoint is this: “How can we automatically change the filename of a document added to a document library?”  We have PDF files that are automatically created in SQL Server Reporting Services, and we want to take advantage of the ability of SRS to create the files and email them and SP 07 lists to receive emails and add attached documents to the list.

Working with SPList and a List of Links

I am working on this Top 3 Sites Webpart that saves to a list of links.  I never knew that there was a variable called SPFieldURLValue that stores the description and url for the variable in a list.  Here is an example of how it would be used in SPList:

Deploying Business Objects to MOSS 2007

Installing Business Objects SharePoint 2003 integration kit under a MOSS 2007 web application requires jumping through a couple of extra hoops.

As with installing the integration kit on SPS03, install in a virtual directory on the MOSS web application. You can’t exclude the path, it is excluded by default.

Custom CSS is applied…when?

Heather Solomon has earned her place as the definitive expert on SharePoint branding, if for no other reason, due to the excellent technical articles on her website. One example is “CSS Options with Master Pages” which is exceedingly helpful. Still, as I’m new to SP development, I’ve found I had to read the pivotal paragraph (which starts “a general breakdown”) several times. I needed to dumb it down to get clarity:

Download details: Streamlining Records Management Using SharePoint Server 2007 Workflow

Download details: Streamlining Records Management Using SharePoint Server 2007 Workflow
The Microsoft Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) Records Management team is responsible for tracking the location and contents of some two million boxes of documents stored by Microsoft employees. The LCA Records Management team created an efficient tracking solution that provides employees with easy access to records information and offsets the need to handle all box inventory queries manually.

Integrate Your Watch with SharePoint List Items and Document Libraries

Last Christmas, I received a lovely new SPOT watch from my wife for Christmas.  It’s an Abacus 2006, one of the more popular SPOT watches du jour.  Here’s the lowdown on SPOT if you’ve never heard of it….

MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008

While at TechEd I had a chance to meet up with some of the Windows Server MVP’s and we were discussing the fact that the latest build for Windows 2008 will indeed support MOSS 2007. I thought this would be a good project when I had some down time to look at and then proceeded to forget all about this goal ofmine.

Massive Scale Deployment - Modularity in SharePoint Farms

I was talking to a team recently about how to scale to the hundreds and thousands of servers to support the extreme large scale deployments.  The question was… Let’s say you were going to design Myspace or a Wikipedia on WSS or SharePoint Server, how would you do it and what would you do?  Without getting into the dev design I broke it down like this….

Is XML Notepad 2007 for BDC Meta Data(Application Definition) File Creation?

One of the hurdles in BDC development is creating XML Metadata Definition file. Microsoft has not yet provided any tool to create XML Definition file – But lot of third party products (like MetaMan, MOSS BDC Design Studio) available to create XML Definition file for BDC applications. But it can’t satisfy our BDC thrist! – If you folks would like to create it by yourself using any XML tools, then obvisouly you need to go for XML Notepad 2007.

Performance and Capacity Planning Tips from Training: My Favorite is Blob Caching

We are talking about capacity planning right now and some info. is being discussed that I wanted to make sure I pass along as some of it is questions I frequently hear.

• Doc libraries no longer are limited to 2 million documents per individual library. You can now place up to 5 million documents in a single library. You do need to ensure thought that you nest contents within subfolders to facilitate query and UI performance.

Pass parameter (Custom Long Url) to Infopath 2007 browser forms using BDC Custom Actions

Last week, I got an excellent oppurtunity to work with Infopath 2007 and Business Data Catalog(BDC). As per requirement, need to pass employee personal information id to infopath forms. Infopath form should pre-populate data from DB based on PersonalInfoID from Querystring.  Whether i pass a parameter to a form file in InfoPath 2007 or the Web browser, first i need to update the form template’s Loading event. The LoadingEventArgs class of the Loading event provides the InputParameters property.

Business Data Catalog Insight/Clarification Here at Training- I Have Been Right and Wrong

Okay I just had a big Homer Simpson DOH! moment. We are deep in the BDC (Business Data Catalog) right now and going through the architecture piece and I have a huge clarification to make around how the BDC exposes data and it turns out I am not alone. In the BDC when you elect to expose the data being mapped through search it does indeed create an index that is accessed for queries. However, the default is not the creation of a data warehouse or index. In fact for the Business Data web parts and Business Data list column views it does use the connection strings to pull directly from the database application.

Triggering the application of a custom theme

Shane Perran says,

“When you apply a theme to a site in V3 (just like V2), the theme.css is not the file which is actually applied to the site.

“Instead your theme and the other CSS is combined forming a file called something to the effect of “ThemeName1011-65001.CSS”. This is the file you need to edit.

“Select View Source from the browser while viewing your site, you’ll notice that file is applied.

“You will find this file in the _themes folder using SharePoint Designer 2007.”

But what if you don’t have or want to use SharePoint Designer for this? How does one get at the combined file?

Migrating SharePoint Portal 2003 Database to SharePoint 2007 using Content Database Migration

There are pockets of information avaiable on migration strategies, but it’s difficult to find concise instructions for migrating a content database.  By the way, I would recommend this approach over in-place or gradual simply because I don’t lose sleep because it has the least risk of de-stabilizing the production SharePoint environment.

Free SharePoint Addons

There are some great Free SharePoint Addons over at CodePlex.  In particular, you should check these out:

• Mondosoft’s Wildcard search feature - MOSS search is pretty darn cool and flexible out of the box.  This leverages SharePoint’s own search engine, it is not replacing it or changing it.
• Tony Bierman’s Central Admin link feature - A link straight to central admin for administrators like SPS 2003 did

Tons of New SharePoint Now Content Live on MSDN - July 12, 2007

Hello folks.

It has been several weeks since I posted an update on new MSDN content. We have been extremely busy publishing content, and here is the list of content published in the month of June and the first week of July:

Utilizing MOSS Search Programmatically via the OM or Web Services

Three new good Visual How Tos:

Creating Search Queries Programmatically by using the Search Web Service in SharePoint Server 2007

 

Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by Using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane

Creating Search Queries Programmatically by Using the Search Object Model in SharePoint Server 2007

MSDN Webcast: Developing Windows SharePoint Services Workflows (Level 200)

Windows SharePoint Services provides excellent facilities for working with business processes. In this “webcast by request,” we review the workflow development processes associated with Windows SharePoint Services. We look at the included workflows, modifying workflows in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, and creating and modifying workflows in the Microsoft Visual Studio development system.