fiVe interesting things

Carolina Code Camp 2013: Introduction to SharePoint Development

Kelly Jones — Mon, 06 May 2013 06:37:00 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2013/05/06/152867.aspx

I spoke this weekend at the Carolina Code Camp on the CPCC campus here in Charlotte and my topic was an Intro to SharePoint Development for .NET Developers (those that have no knowledge of SharePoint). It’s a topic that I’ve been talking about often with new and experienced devs alike, who want to know everything from how to set up a development environment to how to start coding and what can SharePoint do.

From my experience, a lot of the intro presentations given focus on writing those first lines of code, which is a great topic – but it’s about two or three steps away from the absolute beginning. I spoke a little about SharePoint’s version history, my thoughts on setting up an environment, as well as the tools that you use before you open Visual Studio. I ended with some Visual Studio info and I was hoping to get into code, but I was only able to get through my slides before my hour was up.

As I promised to those in attendance, here’s a link to my slide deck on SkyDrive: http://sdrv.ms/10B0uZZ

..and here’s a version you view from Slideshare:

Introduction to SharePoint Developer from Kelly Jones

It was actually good that I didn’t need to do live demos, because I didn’t have access to any of my normal virtual machines that I use for presentations (see my previous post for details: http://www.kellydjones.com/archive/2013/04/21/152760.aspx). I was actually using my Surface RT tablet for the presentation and it worked great. I bought the special mini HDMI to VGA adapter from the Microsoft store here in Charlotte the previous weekend. I went with the VGA adapter because I knew they had VGA connections at the campsite ( ) but I wasn’t sure that they had HDMI.

I was going to do a demo using CloudShare based VMs, but I had trouble getting onto their WiFi and as I said, I didn’t have time for it anyway.

After my presentation, which was the first one of the day for the SharePoint track (one of five tracks with 60 sessions !), I was able to relax and enjoy the other presentations. I got to attend four: an Intro to 2013 Apps Dev, a 2013 SP Designer New Features, an Agile Dev with TFS, and 2013 Search Driven UI session. All of them very good, and all very relevant to what’s going on at the office. All of those speakers did a great job.

Living without a laptop

Kelly Jones — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:12:37 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2013/04/21/152760.aspx

Due to my job change, I'm getting the "opportunity" to re-evaluate my computing needs at home. This is because I've had a company laptop since I first started consulting back in 2004.

Most recently, I had an awesome laptop from work (Cardinal Solutions). It was a Dell Precision M6400 (I think) with an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, a separate video card, two SSDs for storage, and a 15in screen with a high resolution (I think it was 1080p or better). All of this power was needed when I was running SharePoint Virtual Machines (or Outlook – for those of you using Outlook, you know what I mean). Just an awesomely powerful computer.

It was my primary computer both at work and at home, since I'd use it for work/home email, web browsing, etc.

So, once I knew I'd be returning it, I started thinking about its replacement. I already had a desktop at my new job and I might request a laptop, but I knew I wasn't going to be using the work laptop as much as I had the other one.

First things first, I thought about what I already had at home. I have a Windows server (custom built using typical workstation hardware) that I use for general file storage, running Virtual Machines with Hyper-V, media server (for the Xbox's and TVs in the house), and some network services (DNS, DHCP). I built this box to have lots of storage with moderate CPU power. It has five hard drives in it, that total 7TB of storage (but with RAID mirroring, I think the available storage is 4 TB). It also has several strong, loud fans in it, but since this sits in a closet I don't have to hear it.

We also have a Mac Mini (early 2009) that is my wife's primary computer. It is in the kitchen at her desk and she uses it for email/web browsing, plus tracking our finances in Quicken. We also have over a decade's worth of photos and music on it (iPhoto and iTunes). We're often both using computers at the same time, so sharing a computer wouldn't work.

We have a Lenovo Ideapad (Pentium B940) that we bought two years ago. It was going to be my main computer at home, but the kids soon discovered how cool it was and I found the screen resolution small (720p) when compared to my work laptop. The kids use it a lot, so my daughter was especially fearful once I explained that I had to return my work laptop. Again, sharing it would not work well.

One other piece of hardware we have is a Microsoft Surface RT. It's mine, but I let the kids use it every now and then. I take it to work daily and use it in meetings, which it is great for. The small size, the touch screen, the type cover – great. I'm a heavy OneNote user, so I have it on the Surface as well as my work laptop and the notes sync between the two.

Since I have the Surface, I got to wondering if I really still needed a powerful mobile computer (laptop). As a consultant, I often needed to spin up demos on Virtual Machines, but I don't need to do that anymore. Nor do I need to have a good computer ready for when the client doesn't have a machine for me.

SO, after much thinking I decided to build a desktop computer for my own use. I built a machine that has much more power than if I had spent the same amount of money on a laptop. I also get the ability to upgrade any piece of it I need to over the next few years, pretty much the opposite of a laptop (I only ever upgraded RAM and hard drives in a laptop).

I did a bunch of research (Tom's Hardware guide) and bought the following:

AMD A8-5500 Trinity 3.2GHz Quad-Core APU (CPU + GPU)
ASRock FM2A85X Extreme6 motherboard
Corsair XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
Samsung 840 Series 120GB SATA III SSD
Fractal Design Define R4 Mid Tower Case
Rosewill Fortress Series 550W power supply
ViewSonic 23" LED monitor
Logitech wireless keyboard
Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000

One of my design goals was to have a quiet computer, since it'll be sitting in my office and not in a closet. I also wanted a moderately powerful computer that I could upgrade, so I went middle of the road on CPU, but picked a newer design/socket so I can still get upgrades later.

The case and power supply were a little more than I would normally pay, but that was the trade off to get a quiet computer – the case has sound dampening styrofoam and the power supply is highly energy efficient (so I don't need loud fans running to cool it down).

When it came to the processor, I am probably just sentimental about AMD. I do think you get more power per dollar from them, on the low end. If my budget was larger, I would have gone with an Intel Core i7.

I made a huge trade off when it came to storage – only 120GB (our low end Lenovo laptop has 500GB), but I wanted the speed of a solid state drive (SSD). Not just any SSD, but these new Samsung 840 series drives, that have incredible IOP numbers. One of the first upgrades I'll do is probably add something like a 2 or 3TB standard hard drive, but for the OS, I wanted an SSD.

I ordered almost everything from Newegg and put it all together a couple of days ago. So far, I like it. I may miss having a laptop in the future, but for now I'm good.

My own March madness

Kelly Jones — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:17:07 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2013/04/13/152683.aspx

This past March was a big one for me professionally. I spoke at two SharePoint Saturdays, Charlotte and Richmond, I had a huge migration project that was completed (mostly) which involved late nights and one weekend. To cap it all off, I accepted a full time position with the client I've been consulting with for sixteen months – the Carolinas HealthCare System. I started this week as their SharePoint Architect.

First, I want to talk about my experience speaking at SharePoint Saturday – in short, it was great. I want to publically thank both organizations for allowing me to speak and being great hosts. I've done presentations before for work and I spoke once before at a Microsoft hosted mini conference (wow, that must have been three or four years ago and it was about IE8), but this was my first time speaking at a community hosted event/conference. I really appreciated how well organized they were the day of the conference. I enjoyed my experience so much that I volunteered to speak at another event coming up, the Carolina Code Camp here in Charlotte in early May.

Probably the biggest accomplishment for March was the SharePoint migration project at work. We moved several hundred gigs of data, spread out over 4500+ sites/subsites. We did some reorganization, splitting up one huge site collection into 330, while moving another 50 site collections. We also applied branding and turned on the SharePoint 2010 user interface for the first time. (We had migrated from 2007 to 2010 last year, but left the 2007 UI turned on) We also trained several hundred site owners and introduced strong governance. We have a lot of work to do, but we're off to great start.

Given how much I've enjoyed working as a consultant for Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), I decided to accept their offer for a full time position as a SharePoint Architect. We have executive support, a crucial element, which has allowed us to build both a great infrastructure and a great team. I'm particularly excited about the opportunity to help define how things are going to work, technically in the SharePoint environment as well as the business processes that we do as a team. Things like how we process incoming requests for solutions, what services we're going to offer, plus what tools we're going to build to help our forty thousand plus users solve problems in their workday.

One other thing I should say, in the context of the new job. I'm leaving behind a great organization – Cardinal Solutions. I've been a consultant with them for a few years now and they've been very good to me and I will continue to refer anyone looking for a consulting gig to Cardinal. This career move for me was all about the opportunity I was going to and was nothing negative about Cardinal.

2012 Year in Review and Goals for 2013

Kelly Jones — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 05:47:26 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2013/01/20/151884.aspx

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog entry. I seem to start every year with a goal of writing X number of blog entries per month or week or something, so let’s see if I do any better this year, with my goal being at least one lengthy post a month. Hopefully this post will get the ball rolling.

2012 Year in Review

This past year, I’ve worked with one client who needed help migrating their WSS 3.0 farm to SharePoint 2010. I started at the client around Thanksgiving 2011 and I quickly discovered their plan for a quick six week project wouldn’t work. Their SharePoint 2010 farm wasn’t configured correctly as it was really just a proof of concept quick install (only one service account, inadequate server resources, etc.).

Once we got a few servers together, we created a test farm and a production farm and I started doing test migrations. After some false starts, we finally got everything migrated by July. (Yes, a six month project became six months.)

For the last half of the year, I joined a new team at the client who had taken over responsibility for SharePoint and we’ve been working to upgrade and migrate all of the sites again. This time, we’re reorganizing the information architecture, installing custom branding, and moving to a much bigger farm. We’re hoping to have all of this work wrapped up by the end of March.

Another big piece of my work life last year was getting to attend the SharePoint Conference in November. I’ve been to a few conferences before (Connections, Business Process and Workflow, and of course SharePoint Saturdays), but this was my first SharePoint Conference. It was a good year to go especially with 2013 being launched.

When it came to speaking engagements, I only had a few internal ones. I also taught a SharePoint class for our business analysts, as we try to train our BAs to fill SharePoint Analyst roles.

2013 Goals

2013 is starting off with a bang with SharePoint Saturday Charlotte, which I’ll be speaking at (a week from today) on the 26th. Usually, I have goals related to public speaking, so the fact that I’m getting one done in January is a good sign. I’m going to try to attend at least one other SPS, maybe Atlanta, Richmond, or an Ohio one if the travel timing works out. I thought the SPS DC was pretty cool in 2011, so maybe make a family trip out of that one again.

I’m also wrapping up the migration project at my client in the next few months, which will be a big accomplishment. We have further projects to do, which will be a nice change of pace from migrations.

At some point this year, I want to start digging into SharePoint 2013, with an eye toward passing the certification exams for it. My client has no interest in moving to 2013 this year, and probably not even next year, but I still want to try to keep pace with the SharePoint community.

Well, those are my modest goals for the year.

SharePoint 2010 MSDN Labs

Kelly Jones — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:02:56 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2012/03/16/149022.aspx

Eric Ligman, from Microsoft, posted a great blog post this week listing all of the SharePoint 2010 Virtual Labs that are available from Microsoft. His blog entry is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2012/03/13/sharepoint-server-2010-msdn-virtual-labs-available-to-you-online-plus-more-sharepoint-2010-resources.aspx

He also posted other resources as well.

I’ve copied his Virtual Lab links here:

SharePoint Server 2010 Virtual Labs

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Introduction

MSDN Virtual Lab: Getting Started with SharePoint 2010

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint 2010 User Interface Advancements

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010 Connectors & Using the Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Service

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Advanced Search Security

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Configuring Search UIs

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Content Processing and Property Extraction

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Developing a Custom Connector

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Fast Search Web Crawler

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Federated Search

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Linguistics

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: People Search Administration and Management

MSDN Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Relevancy and Ranking

MSDN Virtual Lab: Customizing MySites

MSDN Virtual Lab: Designing Lists and Schemas

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Sandboxed Solution with Web Parts

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing a Visual Web Part in Visual Studio 2010

MSDN Virtual Lab: Developing Business Intelligence Applications

MSDN Virtual Lab: Enterprise Content Management

MSDN Virtual Lab: LINQ to SharePoint 2010

MSDN Virtual Lab: Visual Studio SharePoint Tools

MSDN Virtual Lab: Workflow

In addition to the SharePoint Server 2010 Virtual Labs, here are a few other SharePoint 2010 resources that I thought you might also be interested in:

Technical reference for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

SharePoint 2010: IT Pro Evaluation Guide

Connecting SharePoint 2010 to Line-of-Business Systems to Deliver Business-Critical Solutions

Configure SharePoint Server 2010 as a Single Server with Microsoft SQL Server: Test Lab Guide

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies 2010

Deploying FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Add or Remove an Index Column

Upgrade worksheet for SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Technical Library in Compiled Help format

Microsoft Reseller partner Learning Path

Microsoft solutions partners and ISVs Learning Path

Microsoft partner Practice Accelerator for SharePoint

Microsoft partner SharePoint 2010 Internal Use Licenses

SharePoint Case Studies

SharePoint MSDN Forums

SharePoint TechNet Forums

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 page on Microsoft Partner Network portal

SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model – CAML Query inaccurate results error

Kelly Jones — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:17:05 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/11/08/147619.aspx

I ran into a frustrating scenario today, while working with SharePoint 2010’s Managed Client Object Model. My application queries a SharePoint document library using the file’s name (the FileLeafRef field). Given that this field is unique, I was expecting only one result with the following code:

 1     CamlQuery qry = new CamlQuery();
 2 
 3     //filter the results to only get back the item with the filename we're looking for
 4     qry.ViewXml = string.Format(
 5         "<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='FileLeafRef' /><Value Type='File'>{0}</Value></Eq></Where></Query>",
 6         remoteFileName);
 7 
 8     ListItemCollection itms = lst.GetItems(qry);
 9     ctx.Load(itms);
10     ctx.ExecuteQuery();

Instead of getting one (or none) records, I was getting more than one. SO, I searched some more and found some examples with slightly different xml:

 1 CamlQuery qry = new CamlQuery();
 2 
 3 //filter the results to only get back the item with the filename we're looking for
 4 qry.ViewXml = string.Format(
 5     "<View><Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='FileLeafRef' /><Value Type='File'>{0}</Value></Eq></Where></Query></View>",
 6     remoteFileName);
 7 
 8 ListItemCollection itms = lst.GetItems(qry);
 9 ctx.Load(itms);
10 ctx.ExecuteQuery();

See the difference? Look carefully at line 5 – that’s right. I left out the surrounding “<View>” tags!

Error when trying to access SharePoint 2010 via PowerShell in a new environment

Kelly Jones — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:32:45 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/10/11/147263.aspx

I got this error today while trying to access my new SharePoint 2010 environment via PowerShell:

Cannot access the local farm. Verify that the local farm is properly configured, currently available, and that you have the appropriate permissions to access the database before trying again.

If I would have just read the error message a little more carefully, I would have realized that I should start by looking at my permissions in SQL – which my account didn’t. This happened because I installed SQL Server 2008 R2 in my virtual machine while I was logged on as the local administrator. When I was attempting to run PowerShell, I was logged on as the domain administrator. (These are virtual machines that I’m using for demos….). The local administrator was granted access automatically as part of the SQL install.

Error creating PowerPivot Service Application in SharePoint 2010 (SP1 + June 2011 CU)

Kelly Jones — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:51:14 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/09/18/146931.aspx

A few weeks ago I ran into an error while setting up our test farm. I was creating the service applications and when I got to PowerPivot, I got the following error:

I was able to work around this error by using PowerShell to create the service application.

Background

First, some details of our installation: two web front ends, two application servers, and one SQL server. All are running Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 with Service Pack1. The SQL Server is 2008 R2 with SP1. The SharePoint servers are SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, and I installed SharePoint’s Service Pack 1 and the June 2011 Cumulative Update (by running all of the installers before running the first Configuration Wizard).

Clean Up from the error

Once you run into the error, you’ll see that a new database was created and a phantom application pool was created. To clean these up:

Delete the database in SQL server (I did this just using SQL Studio)
Delete the database in SharePoint, using PowerShell: (Please note: this PowerShell line will delete any database entry in SharePoint where the actual database doesn’t exist in SQL)
```
Get-SPDatabase | Where{$_.Exists -eq $false} | ForEach {$_.Delete()} 
```
Now delete the phantom Application Pool (the error causes a service application pool to be created within SharePoint, but doesn’t actually create it in IIS):

Remove-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity "My App Pool"

Just replace the “My App Pool” text with the name of the application pool you want to delete.

Create PowerPivot Service Application using PowerShell

Now, to create the PowerPivot service application, you can use the following PowerShell script:

   1:  $PowerPivotServiceName = "PowerPivot Service"

2:

   3:  Write-Host "Creating PowerPivot Service Application..."

   4:  New-PowerPivotServiceApplication -ServiceApplicationName $PowerPivotServiceName

       -DatabaseServerName "SQL.MYDOMAIN.LOCAL" -DatabaseName "Service_PowerPivot_1" -AddToDefaultProxyGroup

   5:  Write-Host "PowerPivot Service Application created"

6:

   7:  Write-Host "Creating Application Pool"

   8:  $AppPool = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name "AppPool_PowerPivot" -Account "DOMAIN\SERVICEACCOUNT_USERNAME"

   9:  Write-Host "App Pool created"

10:

  11:  Write-Host "Assigning PowerPivot Application Pool"

  12:  $sa = Get-PowerPivotServiceApplication | where {$_.DisplayName -eq $PowerPivotServiceName}

  13:  $sa.ApplicationPool = $AppPool;

  14:  $sa.Update();

  15:  Write-Host "PowerPivot Application Pool Assigned"

16:

  17:  Write-Host "Script Complete"

You’ll need to fill in a few parameters specific to your environment:

Line 4: DatabaseServerName, DatabaseName

Line 8: The Application Pool’s name and the service account that it will run as

Summary

Doing these steps should give you a working PowerPivot service application. We did open a support ticket with Microsoft. They confirmed that other customers have seen this error, but they are still researching the cause.

SharePoint 2010 Not Indexing OneNote 2010 files

Kelly Jones — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:33:31 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/08/23/146642.aspx

Our SharePoint team at work noticed that our SharePoint 2010 farm wasn’t returning search results based on the contents of OneNote files that were saved in document libraries. I did a little research and found a solution, by putting together steps from different posts.

First, some details: we’re running SharePoint 2010 SP1 (with the June 2011 CU) on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. However, this issue was seen before we applied the service packs and cumulative updates, so I’m not sure what effect, if any, those will have.

In order to get SharePoint 2010 to index OneNote 2010 files, I had to:

(These steps are from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925765 )

Update the registry using the instructions from Microsoft (see above link ) – be sure to change the “12” to “14” in the registry settings, since Microsoft’s instructions are referring to SharePoint 2007 (aka – Office 12 SharePoint) and not SharePoint 2010 (aka – Office 14 SharePoint)

I didn’t need to add the first key that Microsoft lists, because it was already on our servers – this one: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.one] @="{B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}"

(These steps are from here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-AU/sharepoint2010setup/thread/efb6851c-4a1b-4ecd-bbff-e4886ae15751 )

Uninstall the Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0 (which I believe is installed by SharePoint 2010) -- ignore the openned files by Search Service warning/error message
Install Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0 : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17062
Reboot the server
Start a full crawl of the content source in SharePoint Central Administration
- On one of our farms, Test, I also had to do a Index Reset. I’m not sure why this farm was different.

I applied these changes to our three environments (Dev, Test, Prod), so I think these steps are pretty accurate.

Update 8/23/2011 4pm:

After some further testing, it appears that our search results are not reflecting changes to save OneNote files in SharePoint, unless we do an Index Reset (!). It looks like the next step will be to open a support ticket with Microsoft.

SharePoint 2010–Error when deleting Content Type In Use

Kelly Jones — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:15:50 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/07/06/146111.aspx

UPDATE!

July 8th, 2011 -- I’ve been reading Chris Poteet’s blog for a while (probably since Day of .Net Ohio in 2008 or 2009) and he recently started a new blog covering odd user interface quirks and inconsistencies with SharePoint. He’s titled the blog, Unexpected Error. Well, today Chris was kind enough to mention me for follow Friday on Twitter and I followed the link to his blog again – and was stunned to see that I had written a post this week that is pretty much the same one he wrote two weeks ago.

I’m sure I read it when he published it, but I had forgotten about by the time I wrote my post this week. SO, my apologies to Chris for copying his idea.

Please read his post “But Where is the Content Type Used?”, along with the rest of his blog.

I’ve found another annoying user interface quirk you get when you try to delete a content type in SharePoint 2010. If the content type is still being used, you’ll get an error. (The message display will vary, depending on how the custom errors values are set in the web configs.)

There are a couple of options that the SharePoint team could use to make this friendly for the user. First, they could eliminate the “Delete this content type” from the choices available. Another option would be to grey it out, and use tool tips or an asterisk with footnote, to explain why it can’t be deleted. Another useful option would be to list all of the ways that the content type is still in use.

This issue is similar to the one I documented in this post: Illegal characters for SharePoint 2010 Content Type name . In that post, I also detail how to get the full error messages to appear.

Anyway, here’s the sequence of screens that you’ll see. First, you navigate to the content type settings and then select “Delete this content type”:

Once you click “OK”, you’ll see one of the following error messages:

None of them explain what the user needs to do in order to actually delete the content type – namely, removing all dependencies on it.

Illegal characters for SharePoint 2010 Content Type name

Kelly Jones — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:03:39 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/06/23/145957.aspx

Quick tip: you can’t include a backslash in the name of the SharePoint 2010 Content Type. In fact, there are several illegal characters: \ / : * ? " # % < > { } | ~ & , two consecutive periods (..), or special characters such as a tab.

What, you didn’t know that after entering one of these characters in the name? Is it because you saw this screen:

Oh, that’s right….you need to turn off custom errors in the layouts folder…See this blog post for details and you’ll also need to turn off for the web application. Once you do that, you’ll see this:

I wonder why the SharePoint team just doesn’t let the user know that the content type name contains illegal characters before the user hits the create button.

Here’s a copy of the complete error (for the search engines):

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The content type name 'asdfadsf\asdfasf' cannot contain: \ / : * ? " # % < > { } | ~ & , two consecutive periods (..), or special characters such as a tab.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPInvalidContentTypeNameException: The content type name 'asdfadsf\asdfasf' cannot contain: \ / : * ? " # % < > { } | ~ & , two consecutive periods (..), or special characters such as a tab.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:

[SPInvalidContentTypeNameException: The content type name 'asdfadsf\asdfasf' cannot contain: \ / : * ? " # % < > { } | ~ & , two consecutive periods (..), or special characters such as a tab.]
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType.ValidateName(String name) +27419522
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType.ValidateNameWithResource(String strVal, String& strLocalized) +423
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType.set_Name(String value) +151
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType.Initialize(SPContentType parentContentType, SPContentTypeCollection collection, String name) +112
   Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType..ctor(SPContentType parentContentType, SPContentTypeCollection collection, String name) +132
   Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.ContentTypeCreatePage.BtnOK_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) +497
   System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +115
   System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +140
   System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +29
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +2981

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.4927; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.4927

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training

Kelly Jones — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:29:22 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/06/14/145865.aspx

I’ve written a couple of posts about SharePoint 2010 Administrator training/learning, so I thought I should follow up with some tips for developer training as well….

Microsoft has two exams for SharePoint 2010 developers. The first is Exam 70-573, Application Development. The second is Exam 70-576, Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications. Those links cover the topics for each exam as well as some Microsoft preparation materials.

One of the best sites, and one that I relied on a lot with my prep for the exams, is this Microsoft site: http://www.mssharepointdeveloper.com/ It started out as a site for SharePoint 2007 development, but they’ve since pointed it to their 2010 content. It’s a whole series of webinars, with virtual labs and even quizzes.

There’s also a lot of videos on Microsoft’s Channel 9.

Also, if you don’t have a laptop/workstation that is capable of running a SharePoint 2010 virtual machine or you don’t have a spare server handy, check out Cloud Share. I wrote about them in my last blog post and just found a link on Twitter to this post by Owen Allen detailing his experience with them.

SharePoint 2010 Administrator Training – UPDATE

Kelly Jones — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:54:14 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/06/14/145862.aspx

I wrote a post last August with details about what materials I used in order to study for the two Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Exams (70-667 & 70-668) : http://kellydjones.com/archive/2010/08/18/141365.aspx

This question still comes up a lot, so I thought I’d post an update with some more learning materials.

First, I’ve recently discovered Safari books online. Safari books online has a lot of SharePoint books, including Wrox books – which I’ve found that I keep gravitating to. There’s also a LOT more books out there than there were back when I wrote my original post.

Second, I’ve been watching free videos posted by Critical Path on their YouTube channel. They’ve done a great job presenting webinars for free for the last couple of months and now they’ve posted them on YouTube. They are still doing the free webinars for a the new few weeks, and at some point after that they’ll be on YouTube as well. (Critical Path has excellent curriculum for trainer led classes as well.)

Another source of videos is SharePoint-Videos.com . I haven’t watched these yet, just tagged this site to look into later.

Also, there are now more options for getting your hands on a virtual environment of SharePoint. Last year, I pointed out that I have a server that I use to host VM’s. I also have a cool/powerful laptop (provided by my current employer, Cardinal Solutions Group) that I run VMWare Workstation on. However, I’ve recently learned about a hosted option: CloudShare. Asif Rehmani has an Information Worker Demo machine that he has set up on Cloud Share. He’s posted details in his blog here, with instructions of how to get access. It’s definitely something to look into.

Automatically setting file name when submitting InfoPath 2010 Form

Kelly Jones — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:51:42 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/05/31/145652.aspx

After creating my InfoPath form and setting it to publish to a Forms Library in SharePoint 2010, I found that I wanted to fine tune the experience that the user has when submitting a form.

The first thing to change was the annoying dialog asking the user for a filename. Many users will have no idea what SharePoint is asking them for, or worse, they enter a name that’s already used by another form (and either overwriting it or getting an error).

To see what I mean, simply create an InfoPath 2010 form and set it to publish to a SharePoint 2010 Form Library. It doesn’t matter what fields and columns there are.

Now, click on Add Document in the form library and you should see your form, something like this:

Fill out your form and then click the “Close” button – which isn’t obvious for end users.

Although probably confused, end users will most likely pick “Yes” here.

The next dialog is really confusing:

SharePoint is asking for the filename to save the form as in the Form Library. However, unlike a more standard save dialog, this one doesn’t let you see what the existing files are named, so the users are given very few clues as what is expected.

Instead of asking our end users these questions, we can just setup a formula that will automatically determine the filename.

First, either create an InfoPath form that publishes to a SharePoint library or open one you’ve already created. Next, in InfoPath, go to the File menu (backstage) and select Info, and then click on “Submit Options”:

On the Submit Form drop down menu, select “Submit Options”:

The Submit Options dialog window will appear.

· Check the box to “Allow users to submit this form”

· Under “Send form data to a single destination”, choose “SharePoint document library”

· Click the “Add…” button in the “Choose a data connection for submit” area

o Enter the address for the document library

o And here’s what we’ve been looking for: a place to enter a formula that will create the filename for the users – enter what you want here. Remember, you can use a field on the form as well as other variables (such as date and/or time)

o Also, select if you want to allow your users overwrite a form that’s already been submitted

o Click Next

o Click Finish

· Now click Advanced, so more options are displayed

o Under advanced, you can select if you want to display a message if there’s an error and/or if the submit was successful

o You can also choose what to do from there – Close the form, Open a new one, or Leave the current one open

Publish the form and now you should see something like this when you create a new form to submit:

Notice the buttons in the ribbon – there’s now a “Submit” button, along with the default buttons. That’s better, but it’s not quite what I want.

So, open the form back up in InfoPath Designer, and go to the File menu (backstage), select Info, and then click on Form Options at the bottom:

In the Form Options window, the first set of choices is for the form in a Web Browser:

Here is where you can set which buttons to display in the ribbon. Make any changes you want, click, and then Publish the form.

If you don’t want to use the ribbon at all, you can add a button to the form and set it to be the submit button.

Using InfoPath 2010 with SharePoint 2010 Content Types

Kelly Jones — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:40:28 GMT

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/kjones/archive/2011/05/31/145649.aspx

There are a couple of ways to integrate Content Types with InfoPath forms libraries. I’m going to cover one scenario, but I’m sure there are more.

My scenario is that I want to submit a form to a SharePoint 2010 Forms library and align the data collected on the form to existing columns in my Content Type. Here’s a summary of the steps:

· Create a Site Content Type in SharePoint 2010 (my example is HR Forms)

· Create a Forms Library in SharePoint 2010 (my example is HR Forms Test)

· Add the Site Content Type to the newly created Forms Library

· Create a new form using InfoPath Designer 2010

· Publish the form to the form library, mapping the fields on the form to the existing columns in the library

That’s it!

Ok, now for some detailed steps:

Create a Site Content Type in SharePoint 2010

Go to the site in SharePoint 2010 where you want to define your Content Type (this will vary based on your requirements). For my example, I’m creating my Content Type in the root of my site collection, which is at http://intranet .

Go to Site Actions menu –> Site Settings –> Site Content Types.

At the top of the list of content types, click the Create link. You should see a page like this:

I’ve already filled in my Name “HR Forms”, selected the parent content type, and selected an existing group. Click Ok to create your Content Type.

You’ll then be returned to the list of content types – look for your newly created content type under the group that you either chose or created.

Once you locate your content type, click on it. This will bring up the Site Content Type Information page, which contains the settings for your content type. You’ll need to add columns to your content type, which is near the bottom of the window.

Once you’ve added some columns, your page should appear something like this:

Now that the content type is ready, we can move onto our next step.

Create a Forms library in SharePoint 2010

To create a Forms library, go to the Site Actions menu, and select “More Options”. A Create window will appear displaying all of the options of things you can create in SharePoint. If you click on the Library filter on the left, the window will only display libraries (as you’d expect). For our scenario, we need a Form library, so click on Form Library and fill in a name for the new library on the right. Your page should look something like this:

Then click Create. You should now see your forms library:

Add the Site Content Type to the newly created Forms Library

Our next step is to finish configuring the forms library (that we created in the previous step). To do so, go to the forms library and click on the “Library” tab in the ribbon at the top of the page. Then click “Library Settings” which will be near the right:

On the Form Library Settings page, you should see General Settings and then a Columns section. However, you won’t see Content Types. First, you’ll need to allow content types to be used with this forms library. To do this, click on the Advanced Settings in the General Settings section.

On the Advanced Settings page, you’ll need to set “Allow management of content types?” from “No” to “Yes”. This is the first setting at the top of the page. There are a lot of options on this page, but you’ll only need to change the first one for our scenario, so change it and click Ok to save your change.

Now, when you return to the Form Library Settings page, you’ll see Content Types immediately below the General Settings section.

Now, click on “Add from existing site content types” in that Content Types section. On the Add Content Types page, find the content type you created and Add it by selecting it and moving it to the “Content types to add” box, and then clicking Ok.

When you return to the Form Library Settings page, you should see your Content Type listed in the Content Types section.

Create a new form using InfoPath Designer 2010

The next step is to create the form in InfoPath. To do this, you’ll need to open InfoPath Designer 2010. When you open InfoPath, it should display the New window (if not, go to the File menu/backstage and select new):

In the new window, select “SharePoint Form Library” and click the “Design Form” button on the right. InfoPath will then create a new form for you to edit. Make any changes that are necessary, including adding fields that your form needs to collect from the user. Be sure to create fields for any Column that you’ll need to populate in your Content Type.

Once you’ve got your form the way you want, be sure to save it.

Publish the form

The next step is to publish the form so users can access it in SharePoint 2010. To do this, go to the File menu (backstage) and select the “Publish” choice on the left:

Now, click on the “SharePoint Server” option. (If you haven’t saved your form, you will be prompted to save it at this point.)

The Publishing Wizard will open. You’ll need to enter the URL of the SharePoint site:

On the next screen, you need to select “Form Library” from the choices:

On the next screen, you want to select “Update the form template in an existing form library” and then select the library that you created earlier:

On the next screen, you will need to align fields in your InfoPath form to the columns in your Form Library. Click Add and then select the field in the top of window and the matching Form Library column in the lower half:

Repeat this step for each field that you want to map to the Form Library columns.

When you’re done, click Next and then Publish. InfoPath will publish the form and then give a summary of the just published form.