Exploring SharePoint

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Android mobile phone

InfoPath 2007 features availability in Forms Services

InfoPath forms can be previewed in the InfoPath Client as well as the Browsers. The InfoPath Client must be installed with a client license on a client machine, limiting it to an intranet based application platform. On the other hand, using a browser based InfoPath form helps in designing applications accessible even from Internet. This is really cool but the trade-off is its cost. You need to have the Enterprise License for the MOSS which includes the Form Services.
But still, not all the InfoPath 2007 controls are available to the browser based forms.
Below is a list of what is available or not in InfoPath client and browser based forms:

The best practice would be to use the Design Checker feature from the Task pane or from Tools > "Design Checker" to validate whether the form is a valid browser based form.
The Design Checker correctly identifies the controls which are not supported to be part of a browser based form.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

URL Encoder - Decoder

I was working with some list data submission and needed to make use of the GUID of the custom list that I had created. The GUID generally reads like this:
%7B79674320%2DADEA%2D4AE6%2DAAD2%2D29D33BE5EA7C%7D

To have this in a format acceptable to SharePoint, I found a nice little utility that encodes and decodes this beautifully.
After decoding it looks like this:
{79674320-ADEA-4AE6-AAD2-29D33BE5EA7C}

Thanks to Eric, I assume he is the author, for this tweaky thing !!
Below is the URL to this utility:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/

Feel free to use and make your life much simpler.

Happy New Year 2008 !!!

Just wanted to wish you all a very happy, prosperous and bright new year 2008 !!!
May all your wishes come true through the twist and turns of this year.
:-)
Keep smiling...
Always !!!

Friday, December 28, 2007

MOSS Products pricing

Need information about the pricing of the MOSS products in each of its categories.
Read along...
Servers ____________________________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 .............................. $4424
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Standard ...... $8213
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Enterprise ... $57,670
Office Forms Server 2007 ................................... $4424
Client Access Licenses ______________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard CAL .................... $94
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL ..................$75
Office Forms Server 2007 CAL ...................................... $54
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 .................................. $187
Internet Facing Sites _______________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites ......... $40,943
Office Forms Server 2007 for Internet sites .................. $22,118

Source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX102176831033.aspx

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Ever heard of Silverlight !!!

Huh, seems like nothing to do with technology stuff...
But strangely though, you won't believe Microsoft has adopted a fascinating way of grabbing your attention.
Unlike, Mac guys, who name something like Jaguar, Tiger, Leopard, etc. to their OS, Microsoft is in the blues with Vista and now Silverlight.
Silverlight, in essence, is a cross-browser, cross-platform plugin for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web solutions.
It offers a very flexible programming model that can supports any of the JavaScript, Visual C#, Visual Basic, and other languages.
So now you know about Silverlight. Go ahead and download its 1.1 version currently available.
Want to have a quick look at what Silverlight has to offer, check out the Tim Sneath's blog, who has several short webcasts for Silverlight:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/30/silverlight-screencasts.aspx

Cool stuff from Microsoft !!!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Definition for 'ExecuteAction' not found in InfoPath assembly

Today I came across a kind of weird error, which really should be handled by InfoPath Team.
I had created a InfoPath 2007 browser enabled form with just the following two controls:
- A checkbox.
- An Optional Section with few textboxes.
My intention was to show/hide the optional section based upon the check box selection.
So, when I select the checkbox, the section would show up and hide when unselected.
To implement such a simple logic, I had the below code fragment in VSTA from one of the Microsoft Labs:
//*******************************************************************************//
public void chkStatus_Changed(object sender, XmlEventArgs e)
{
// Write your code here to change the main data source.
if (e.NewValue.Equals("true")) //if selected
CurrentView.ExecuteAction(ActionType.XOptionalInsert, "group2_2");
else //if not selected
{
XPathNavigator node =
MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:group2",
NamespaceManager);
CurrentView.SelectNodes(node, node, "CTRL5");
CurrentView.ExecuteAction(ActionType.XOptionalRemove, "group2_2");
}
}
//*******************************************************************************//

But when compiled in VSTA, it throws the below error:
'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.View' does not contain a definition for 'ExecuteAction'.

Found a relevant resolution at this location:
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/05/17/how-to-integrate-the-net-framework-sdk-documentation-with-vsta.aspx

But it talks about changing the Forms compatibility, which I donot need.
Instead, I must agree, that there is a multiple existence of the 'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.dll', one of 47KB and other of 59KB.
So I got this resolved by removing the refrence of this (47KB) dll and adding it back again from the other location with 59KB.
Compile it again...and I have my browser enabled form back again, compiling successfully.

Suggestions for InfoPath Team:
- Keep a single copy of this DLL ('Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.dll').
- or Modify the reference to the Dll whenever the Compatibility checkbox is selected/unselected to point to the correct DLL.

Hope this is helpful to someone getting the same error.

Friday, December 14, 2007

It was great getting my MCTS !!!

Today I cleared my MOSS Configuration exam (TS 70-630).
It was indeed cool.....eh......but you need to be really thorough.

Having seen so many of the guys getting this certification in a quick row, made me really think for it. And not to mention that my employer needs this as much as I do.

Was a good experience and I would suggest any of you to take an attempt at it who has at least worked (hands-on) six months on MOSS, else it would be a disaster.

And not to forget, the Transcender really helps!

Good Luck!!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Creating a Publishing site under a Team site

In general, to publish a site feature, you would use the command line as follows:

STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename Publishingsite\feature.xml
-url http://

This command line also installs the Publishing Layouts and Publishing Resources features that are required for a publishing site.
Also, this installs the feature at the site collection level when you activate this feature from the Site Features link on the site's Site Settings page.
Installing and activating the publishing site feature creates the standard lists needed for publishing (Documents, Images, Pages, Site Collection Documents, Site Collection Images, Cache Profiles, Style Library, Reports List, Reusable Content, and Workflow Tasks) and populates the Master Page And Page Layout Gallery with the 13 additional master and layout pages used in publishing sites. It also adds 14 new management links in Site Settings.

This is fine!!! Now you may go ahead and start creating sites and sub-sites with the publishing features (if activated at that site level). But what if you need a publishing site below a team site.
This can be achieved.
If your site collection started as a WSS3.0 template, first use STSADM.EXE to "activate" the Publishing Resources and Publishing Layouts features at the site-collection level, but do not activate Publishing in the features listed at the Top Level Site Settings.
Then use STSADM.EXE to activate the Publishing Web feature on the sub-Web-site URL, and in the Site Settings for that site, activate Publishing.
The command-line examples are as follows:
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishingresources\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishinglayouts\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishingweb\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/SubWeb1/

Try this to have a publishing site below a team site.
Good Luck!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

MOSS in a Mobile Device

Among several new features in MOSS 2007, a fairly interesting one is the support for Mobile devices.
MOSS 2007 uses "mobile views" to provide built-in support for mobile devices. To view a site in mobile mode, use the following:
http://siteurl/_layouts/mobile/default.aspx.
A shortcut for the same is: http://siteurl/m, provided the Site is mobile enabled.
If not, in this case you may see a "page not found" kind of error, you may enable this feature using the below command:
stsadm -o activatefeature -name MobilityRedirect -url http://siteurl/
By default, the redirect feature is supported for any Web site that is based on standard STS site definition.
This feature for redirecting users to the mobile home page can be found in the following directory:
Local_Drive:\12hive\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MobilityRedirect
(I'm sure you know what I mean by 12hive :-), for those newbies it is the new location on the file system where you install MOSS. In default install location, it is:
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12)

Every list and library in MOSS 2007 or WSSv3 is capable of hosting ‘Mobile Views’. These are standard views of lists or libraries that an administrator has defined as being mobile enabled. You can also view individual list items in mobile form.
To mobile enable any list/views, use the same interface that is used to modify the views, filters, groups etc. as shown below: