"MySite" not working SharePoint 2007

I was working on MySite today and while playing around i had no clue what i did but i was sure of one thing that i totally messed it up .

MySite stopped responding and after that only thing which came to mind is "SOS"

Anyways in case you end up in same situation which is very possible in the life of a computer geek , then simply follow the steps .

1)Open Central Administration ->Operations and create a new web application with "My Site Host" as template.
2)Well once you are done with creation of site the only thing remaining is to point the MySite to the new application URL as , so change the URL.

- Go to SSP

- click on "My Site Settings"

- Specify the new Url at "Personal Site Service"

That's It .Try accessing the MySite now.It's up and running.

Custom Activity for SharePoint Designer 2007

Every time you start workflow development there is big question in mind, Should i use Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer 2007 and you might end up visual studio if the workflow requirement is bit more than the "out of box" functionality of SPD.

Would'nt it be nice if i can plug in more functionality to Sharepoint Designer.

When MOSS 2007 came into market the impression was that SPD is not much extensible and is to be used for very simple workflow , but i am glad Microsoft didn't made it that stringent and have provided a way to attach custom activities to the SPD.

I have created custom activities in number of work flow scenario and belive me its great .I won't put my procedures in this blog as there are blogs where you can get the complete process. They helped me a lot of understand the "Custom Activities" development.

Here they are :

By Carlos Segura Sanz
http://www.ideseg.com/AddCustomWorkflowActivitiesToSharePointDesignerPart1.aspx
http://www.ideseg.com/AddCustomWorkflowActivitiesToSharePointDesignerPart2.aspx

John Holliday
http://johnholliday.net/archive/2007/03/27/Add-Your-Own-Custom-Workflow-Activities-to-SharePoint-Designer-2007.aspx

SharePoint Designer Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2007/03/15/adding-activities-to-spd.aspx

Well majority of them speak about same stuff , but cross reference helps to make understanding much clear .

HAPPY WORK~FLOWING!!!!

Infopath Form 2007 feature Unavailable in Infopath Form Services

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102105871033.aspx#1

People Picker Control for Infopath 2007

Ever wanted to have a people picker kind of control in Infopath form and that too in browser mode. Did i heard yes :) , well there is a Active-X control which takes care of this part named "Contact Selector Control".

Just follow the steps to get it working :

Add Contact Selector to Controls Pane

• Click the "Add or Remove Controls " from the Control Task pane as shown in figure

• Click ADD
• Select Active-X
• This will display a list of controls , select "Contact Selector" ,click Next
• Select "Don't include a .cab file"
• From drop down select "Field or Group(any data type) and click finish
  

DataSource for the Contact Selector control

• Add non Repeating group named "group1"
• Add a repeating Group names "Person"
• Add following test field to the "Perosn " group (DisplayName,AccountId,AccountType)
  

Add Secondary datasource XMl file with details about the SharePoint Server , this is required by the form in order to validate the user against a particular sharepoint server .

• Open Notepad and add the following Tag <Context siteUrl="http://<servername>"/>
• Save the file as Context.xml
• Add new connection as "Receive Type" and source of data as "XML"
• Option “Include the data as a resource file” shoule be enabled
  

Drag control to the form and you are all set .

Best of Luck !!!!

MOSS 2007 Webcasts and Videos

I was planning to make a list of good webcast and video on SharePoint , Thanks to Steve Sofian for taking this initiative :-)

These are some good collection of sharepoint concepts :

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/ssofian/archive/2006/07/28/9532.aspx


Enjoy!!!!

People Picker not able to identify users in forest with multiple domain - SharePoint 2007

I am working on this issue from past 2 days and belive me it's very time consuming in case you dont get the solution ASAP . Thanks to Joel Oleson's Life blog which talks about the same.

To keep it short i would just give the problem statement and solution to get it working .


Problem Statement :
When Sharepoint server 2007 is installed in environment with more than one domain , there is a tendency of people picker control to search only in domain where the portal is installed .
E.G Consider following environment as example

Forest Name :test.com
First Domain :First.test.com
Second Domain :Second.test.com

In such case if you install sharepoint server in domain First.test.com , the people picker might not recognize users from Second.test.com.
So what could be done to make it work .

Solution Description :
Note : First make sure that there exist atleast a one way trust between the 2 domains(First.test.com /Second.test.com) and follow the steps.

First Step :
Run stsadm.exe to set the password used for encrytion/de-cryption

stsadm.exe -o setapppassword -password
eg stsadm.exe -o setapppassword -password testpassword


Second Step :

Format of command :
stsadm.exe –o setproperty -url {} –pn "peoplepicker-searchadforests" –pv {list of forests or domains}

The format of {list of forests or domains} is a list of

forest:DnsName,LoginName,Password
or
domain:DnsName,LoginName,Password

separated by semicolon.

As per our example the command is like

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsa
dm.exe -o setproperty -url "http://localhost" -pn "people
picker-searchadforests" -pv "forest:test.com;domain:First.test.com;domain:Second.test.com" ,{domainusername},{domainuserpassword}


Last step IISRESET might not be needed (i did that :) ).

And you are all set , try the People picker search and you get all the users.

Customizing MySite in SharePoint 2007

Well i was searching for a methodology to customize MySite in SharePoint 2007 and Volla!!! i got this excellent article:

Customizing MOSS 2007 My Sites within the enterprise