Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Adding additional Web Part Zone in SharePoint 2007 Page

Simple Steps:

  • Open SharePoint website using SharePoint Designer 2007
  • Open the desired page where you need additional “WebPart Zones”
  • Web parts zones needs to be defined in Content Placeholders .Make sure you have corresponding placeholders in Master page .
  • Add the following line at desired content placeholder of your page :

    < runat="server" frametype="TitleBarOnly" id="Left" title="loc:Left">
    <>
    < /ZoneTemplate>
    < /WebPartPages:WebPartZone >

    If you need more Web Part Zones Replicate the above code and change the "Title" and "ID" attribute.



  • WSS 3.0 vs MOSS 2007

    Generic Questions and here is the answer:

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/FX101758691033.aspx

    Saturday, December 16, 2006

    Custom Workflow using SharePoint Designer 2007

    I could not find a simple descriptive article on creating workflow using sharepoint designer so here it goes if you are looking out for one . The custom workflow is one level but using designer life is so simple that adding multiple level is matter of "kind of duplicating" the steps .You can also view the same document at url http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgqwf6bx_20c5ghkm and save as .mht for offline reading.

    Scenario

    • Author creates document and submits the approval request to the

    • Reviewer approves/rejects the document.

      • In case of approval email is sent to author notifying approval

      • In case of rejection email is sent to author notifying rejection

    Implementation :


    • Create an sharepoint list with approval enabled

    • Open sharepoint designer 2007

    • Open the desired site for workflow as shown below :

      • Click File ->Open Site

      • Enter the url of the desired site in site name section and press “Open”


      • This will open the site

    • Creating new workflow

      • Click File -> New

      • The “New “ Dialog box will pop up

      • Select “SharePoint Content” tab

      • Select workflow from the list box “Blank workflow”


      • Assign appropriate name to workflow in my case its “Approval workflow”

      • Select the list in sharepoint list to which this workflow should be associated

      • Select the start condition of the workflow

        • Start when item is created

        • Start when iten is changed

        • Manual workflow start up


      • Before we start we will go forward and define some initiation workflow variables .

      • Click on the initiation button

        • Define a variable named “workflowstatus” and set the default value as “notstarted”


    1 STEP 1


    • Lets start defining the workflow

      • First define a step name “To Approver”

      • Click conditions button and you will get an drop down


      • Select “Compare any data source” you will get option as shown in figure

      • click on the “value” you will get an input box with an eclipse button like this


      • Click on that “fx” eclipse button

      • You will get dialog box like this with “current item” as default selection

      • change the selection to”Source: workflow data” and in the field section select :Initiation :workflowstatus”


      • Click Ok

      • Now select the “value” field after “equal “ and in the input box fill “notstarted”

      • No we are ready with our condition with says “ If “workflowstatus” variable is equal to “notstarted” then execute the defined action

      • Lets Go forward and put process in our action section

      • select “Set workflow variable”

      • Set the values as shown in fig below

      • Now we have set the workflow variable” workflowstatus”to started

      • Lets send E-Mail to the Reviewer for approval request

      • From the actions Menu select send an EMAIL

        • click on “this message” which will eventually pop up a self descriptive dialog box

        • Fill all the appropriate fields for EMAIL and Email is set

          • To : “Reviewer Email ID”

          • Subject

          • Body

      • After email to reviewer we have to make sure that our workflow waits for “Approval/Rejection ” from the Reviewer

      • In order to achieve a “WAIT” we have to add one more action

        • So click on the actions and select “Wait for field change in current item”

        • Assign values and make condition as shown below

    Ie Wait till the “Approval status “ is not either “Approved/Rejected”

    • We are done with our first step where the author has requested an approval and reviewer has received mail of approval request


    2 STEP 2



      • In this step we have to take care of 2 conditions “Approved /Rejected “

      • To define seconf step click “Add workflow step “on eight pane of workflow designer

      • The Second step would look like this

      • So define 2 conditions “If approved “ and If Reject “

      • The branching of condition can be achieved using the drop down of activity

      • This will take care of the second step

      • Once the email is send stop the workflow by selecting “stop workflow” from the Action menu , this make stop the workflow and make the workflow status to complete


    NOTE: Always make sure to stop workflow in all the implementation, in case its missed the workflow will still be alive in the system and that might lead to server performance degradation




    Thursday, December 14, 2006

    MOSS 2007 Site Object Model in NUTSHELL


    People search not working in MOSS 2007 Server

    Scenario :

    Setting up Search functionality in Sharepoint server site, which needs configuration of Shared Services Provider (SSP) :• Setting up user Profiles• Setting up address to be crawled• Set up of Scope …
    After the complete configuration on testing, you might come across situation where search in site data works but people search doesn’t seem to work .This can really be nerve clinching …well though it seem like a big issue with installation and stuff but it’s a “miss” in configuration setting.
    The addition of url “sps3://sitename “works wonders…..well am sure this is surely going to make my Christmas celebration much better …

    Wednesday, December 13, 2006

    Implementing Multiple Authentication for MOSS 2007 Portal Site( EXTRANET )


    The above depicted scenario is as follows:
    • The internal user information are stored in Active Directory
    • External user information is stored in SQL database.

    In such case of multiple authentication source requirements, we need to configure the site in different zone. The authentication can be defined with respect to these defined zones.
    Zone represents different logical path for gaining access to same physical application. To create a new zone, extend the Web application. In the Load Balanced URL section, specify the URL and zone type.




    <---- The Zone URL can accessed as shown
    <--- Set the Zone URL After extending an application we can set the authentication of the application to each zone for e.g. as shown below the web application is set to default zone set to "windows auth " and internet zone set to SQl authentication .

    <-- Figure show same web application with different Zone and authentication







    Other good articles :
    http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/08/16/702010.aspx

    http://www.sharepointblogs.com/andynoon/archive/2007/07/04/defining-multiple-authentication-providers-to-a-single-moss-2007-web-application.aspx

    Tuesday, December 12, 2006

    Integrating Outlook Client Calendar with MOSS 2007 Calendar




    All the users from outlook world am sure would love the calendar functionality provided by Outlook client , but when you try to show then the SharePoint calendar , they come with same old question “Can i sync my SharePoint Calendar with Outlook Calendar “ .The answer would be yes and no .

    It is possible to have the SharePoint calendar within your outlook client, sounds interesting J
    Well let’s go forward and open the SharePoint calendar.Click on the “Actions” menu as shown below and click on the “Connect to Client” menu item .As shown above.

    This will open Outlook client with calendar as shown and market in below figure...



    This way the SharePoint can be kept in sync with the outlook client .Advantage of this approach is that in case the SharePoint portal server is not available the data can be accessed via client as its stores a copy of the calendar. This improves the offline capability of SharePoint.

    Friday, December 08, 2006

    Unable to open infopath form in browser , Session Cookie disabled Error MOSS 2007


    I  am not  sure till now the reason for this error , i tried all the  solution even allowing all the cookies settings in browser but negative result .
    The amazing thing  during this process whcih came into my notice is that , when i try to open the form in Firefox it works fine . But that's not the solution as the users in my current implementation were using IE 6.0+ .

    Though i could not figure out reason for that but fortunately it worked in the newly installed server with release version of MOSS 2007 .
     
    So conclusion from my end is that if by any chance u bump into this problem , it may be due to soem installation error in server and that too if you are running with Beta 2/TR .In such case install the Evaluation version of MOSS 2007 in clean server and life would become much better . In case you are aware of any workaround or solution make a note here .

    Rags

    "My Site :Page not found" MOSS 2007

    This might arise if the current database containing the SSP data has been deleted accidently

    .

    Solution :

    1) In Such case try to restore the SSP site from site backup if you have taken one

    2) Recreate Shared Service Provider for the web application. There will be data loss by this approach

    ·        The complete MySite information of all the users will be lost and they have to fill the details once more

    ·        Search and profile data needs to be repopulated using the SSP administration

    Tuesday, December 05, 2006

    "Search service is offline "

     

     This error turns up when the Index server is not defined in the SSP(Shared Service Provider).Edit the SSP and assign an index server .

     

     

    Rags

    Tuesday, November 28, 2006

    "Error Loading Workflow" Visual Studio .NEt 2005

    Its great day  and i have decided to create an "Custom workflow" got one sample from internet and life seems to be soo easy/But the truth is not that easy ...
    As soon as i started to create a Workflow project using sharepoint workflow template which u can get by downloading the ECM Starter kit "http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=38CA6B32-44BE-4489-8526-F09C57CD13A5&displaylang=en "
     
    Well started the project and selected sequential work flow and was shocked to get the error message :
     

    Error Loading Workflow

     

    An error occurred while loading the workflow. Please correct the following error and try reloading the document to view the workflow. :(

     

    Thought of doing soem research but no luck initially  .Took a tea break and then started with a revitalized mind. It came to my notice that i am missing three components from the project reference

    • Microsoft.sharepoint.workflowactions.dll
    • Microsoft.office.workflow.tasks.dll
    • Microsoft.sharepoint.dll
     
    Added these references and wolaah ...Things started working ...
     
    Life is real good ....
     
     
    Rags

     

     

    Monday, November 27, 2006

    "Unknown Error" in BETA 2 TR during "Alert Me" registration

    Just Run this :
     
    stsadm -o updatealerttemplates -url http://server -filename "C:\Program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\XML\alerttemplates.xml" 
     
     
    and u will be done .
     
    Rags
     

    Tuesday, October 31, 2006

    MOSS 2007 Beta 2 TR Installation

    Link for Beta 2 TR installation
     
    Note  : You need to have MOSS Beta 2 installaed in your machine before upgrading with MOSS 2007 Beta 2 TR version .

    Friday, October 13, 2006

    Lotus Notes - MOSS 2007 :Feature Mapping

    In my last article was on migration approach from Lotus Notes to MOSS 2007 , well that itself was a daunting task .You get that part
    "RIGHT" and life is heaven .
    One fine Weekend  morning i decided to have a look to one of the Lotus application to be migrated to MOSS 2007, i preffered to sit with my Lotus Notes expert in order to explore the "Maze " of Lotus platform , didnt wanted to get lost :-)

    Well the application to be dissected was a kind of manual application  which stores the information about organization in hierarchical format.
    Lotus notes expert were on it and during dissection it came to my notice that there are multiple forms in one application ,each form with different fields.

    As per my understanding of the not so old days of SPS 2003, its only possible to have   list with multiple fields(ie in lotus notes term one form with multiple field) .

    Then came the question of life "How am i gonna migrated this multiple form thingy to my MOSS 2007" .My instant reaction GOD "SOS"

    Well i feel god heard :) and "Wollah" there is  a new feature in MOSS 2007 named "CONTENT TYPES" . I have started loving this product now .

    In simple terms "Content Types" are entities which to stores multiple content in same object(every content type can have different fields)

    So in simple terms

    LOTUS NOTES                             MOSS2007

    Notes Form <---------------------------> Content Type
    Fields   <---------------------------------->  Fields

     

    Tuesday, October 10, 2006

    Tool for Lotus Notes Application Migration

    During my current Lotus to SharePoint migration the mail concern was the migration approach and cost associated with it . There were 2 options :
    1)Either create a migration tool as per requirement which means a good number of  Person Hours
    2)Second approach is to buy a third party tool ,but in this case as there arevery few lotus application to be migrated and that too they were simple ones so buying a tool was not a right decision and was not even good fit for  budgetting of the project .

    After lots of research i got the "Microsoft Application Transporter 2006 for Lotus Domino" from Microsoft .Download from " http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c6066e89-7690-44a4-86d6-ab1d60808022&DisplayLang=en"
     
    Now this fits to our requirment and i must say that tool is good enough for simple and average complexity  Lotus notes application migration

     

    Tuesday, September 12, 2006

    Sunday, September 10, 2006

    Page Parsing in WSS 3.0 and WSS 2.0

    To start with the WSS 2.0  page parsing mechanism , WSS 2.0 was integrated with ASP.NET 1.1 using the ISAPI filter. Request from the client is directly routed to ISAPI filter before ASP.NET  mechanism in WSS 2.0 .This approach might not be the ideal  as its not possible to leverage complete funcionality of ASP.NET .

    This Has been very well handled in WSS 3.0 where the ISAPI filter is removed and the request routing is done using HttpModule and HttpHandler .Advantage of this approach is that the request is handled by the ASP.NET runtime before it is forwarded to WSS processing mechanism.
     
    To get insight details on this please check the following article by "Ted Pattison"
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/07/WSS30Preview/default.aspx

    Friday, September 08, 2006

    MOSS 2007 Database

    A simplest article which people tend to miss :) ..Database created by MOSS 2007 .Here it goes :

    Once the MOSS 2007 is installed following databases are created :
    Admin_Content database which store admin related content of central admin site

    SSP database(Shared Service Provider ) :Stores data which needs to be shared by multiple sites

    SSP Search Database

    Configuration Database

    Content database

    Gray Failures: What is it and how to detect one?

    If you are reading this article , i guess you are curious to know about gray failures and different methods to detect gray failures.  Hopefu...