Exploring SharePoint

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Microsoft 2008 Product Launch

The great time is here again!
The previous launch had different looks with the Windows 2003 SBS launch and the Visual Studio / SQL 2005 launch. But this is just a single release event for all three. WOW !!!
Almost all cities open for registration, and the other cities are listed and will be available soon. Below is the url and the list of cities where these great shows are happening:
http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/register/default.mspx
May 13 Albany, NY
April 15 Albuquerque, NM
April 8 Anaheim, CA
April 16 Anchorage, AK
April 29 Atlanta, GA
May 1 Baltimore, MD
April 29 Baton Rouge, LA
April 22 Birmingham, AL
April 28 Boise, ID
March 18 Boston, MA
April 8 Charlotte, NC
March 11 Chicago, IL
March 13 Cleveland, OH
March 20 Columbus, OH
April 8 Dallas, TX
March 20 Denver, CO
April 24 Des Moines, IA
March 18 Detroit, MI
March 13 Edison, NJ
May 6 Fort Lauderdale, FL
April 24 Fresno, CA
May 13 Grand Rapids, MI
March 6 Harrisburg, PA
April 17 Hartford, CT
April 30 Honolulu, HI
March 20 Houston, TX
April 3 Indianapolis, IN
April 24 Jacksonville, FL
March 25 Kansas City, MO
April 3 Las Vegas, NV
April 29 Long Island, NY
February 27 Los Angeles, CA
May 22 Louisville, KY
April 17 Madison, WI
March 11 Manchester, NH
May 8 Milwaukee, WI
April 1 Minneapolis, MN
May 1 Nashville, TN
March 4 New York, NY
April 22 Omaha, NE
April 3 Philadelphia, PA
April 1 Phoenix, AZ
April 14 Pittsburgh, PA
May 6 Portland, OR
April 10 Raleigh, NC
May 22 Reno, NV
May 22 Reston, VA
May 20 Richmond, VA
May 15 Rochester, NY
April 22 Sacramento, CA
May 20 Salt Lake City, UT
March 4 San Antonio, TX
May 13 San Diego, CA
March 13 San Francisco, CA
March 25 Santa Clara, CA
April 1 Seattle, WA
March 27 Spokane, WA
May 6 St. Louis, MO
May 8 Tampa, FL
March 27 Tulsa, OK
March 25 Washington, DC
Act immediately...

Friday, January 11, 2008

Latest IFilters released from Microsoft

Its happening yet again...
William Bear has the below report posted on his blog:
"The Microsoft Filter Pack for search has been released enabling critical search scenarios across a variety of Microsoft Search products including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express Edition, Exchange Server 2005, SQL Server 2005/2008, and Windows Desktop Search 3.1/4.0.
The Microsoft Filter Pack provides iFilters for the following file type extensions:
.docx (Microsoft Office 2007 Word Document)
.docm (Microsoft Office Word Macro-Enabled Document)
.pptx (Microsoft Office 2007 PowerPoint Presentation)
.xlsx (Microsoft Office 2007 Excel Worksheet)
.xlsm (Microsoft Office Excel Macro-Enabled Worksheet)
.xlsb (Microsoft Office Excel Binary Worksheet)
.zip (WinZip File)
.one (Microsoft Office OneNote Section)
.vdx (Microsoft Office Visio Drawing)
.vsd (Microsoft Office Visio Drawing)
.vss (Microsoft Office Visio Stencil)
.vst (Microsoft Office Visio Template)
.vsx (Microsoft Office Visio Stencil)
.vtx (Microsoft Office Visio Template)
NOTE The current release is not localized and available at this time in English only supporting both x86 and x64 architectures. To download the Microsoft Filter Pack or to learn more visit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en."

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Problem with the Cascading Dropdown Lists

I was hitting my head hard when I tried to link two dropdowns linked to each other.
The selection on the first Dropdown filtered the contents of the second Dropdown.
Then I need to select an item from the second Dropdown.
All worked good, except that after the process completes, the second Dropdown is left with just the selected item. All the filtered items are gone . This sucks!!!
After much googling, I found this blog which refers it to be a bug in the InfoPath Form Services and has a workaround for it.
Great !!! however things work, you are good to go.
Here is the link to the blog:
http://www.mcse.ms/archive/index.php/t-2304207.html

Hope it saves your time !

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.