Connect.Collaborate.SharePoint
Oct
27
In a fit of beta withdrawal symptom, I threw caution to the wind and gave it a shot.
I got the 403 forbidden error so resorted to stsadm feature activation.
Most things are working but comments are dead because the CAPTCHA Image Validation image is not displaying due to a faulty url (double //)
 
The latest postings are also backwards in time (i.e. a blast from the past, my original 5 posts).
 
I expect to be able to resolve these issues and hope I don't regret installing this beta ;-)
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Oct
23

I have been playing around with options for creating SCORM content for the SharePoint End User Training Kit.

You can see my Test category on http://www.wssdemo.com/training

This module was created with eXe, an open source solution developed in New Zealand. It works but doesn't use the tools I prefer ;-)

I have just found Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office which is a desktop application that runs on top of Microsoft Office to give students and teachers a custom Office environment to easily create effective instructional resources, complete administrative tasks, and implement new teaching strategies and with the Content Development Kit, you can create even more templates and tools to use with Learning Essentials.

Just kicking off the download before heading off to sleep... Will see how useful it is tomorrow.

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Oct
23

I have had 2 complaints about this because wssdemo uses this web part on the home page to replace the Quick Launch menu.

Two years later and I have implemented a solution (because I had to use Firefox myself for the first time to try out a SCORM content creation tool).

Pretty simple solution; just create a link to a view in the pages library with the items expanded.

http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/Forms/Menu.aspx

The real solution would be to fix the javascript in the data view, don't know if SP1 will do that but if it does then it would be a waste of my time trying to fix it.

I also created a Site Directory web part page using the Table Of Contents Web Part (MOSS only web part) http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/TOC.aspx

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Oct
23

Joel Olsen has just posted some guidance on Email Enabled Lists and Inbound Email

There is some good advice in there regarding internal sources of email.

Here is my killer scenario for using an email enabled discussion forum.

How many public web sites do you see the "For sales enquires contact us mailto:sales@blablabla123xyz.com (blablabla actually exists, so I didn't want to get them added to spam lists)

And where does that email go? I often ask customer this question and they always say "to a shared mail box or DL".

So who knows when someone has dealt with the enquiry? How do assign the enquiry to someone based on the appropriate subject matter expertise? How can you analyse the type of enquiries you receive?

I guess you can see where I'm going with this. Have the email go to an email enabled Discussion group. Add a few metadata columns and throw in some workflow.

The only tip I have if you are going to implement this sort of solution is to ensure you have some good spam filtering before the email gets to SharePoint!

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Oct
23

Or any library that has hundreds or thousands of customer folders.

Because the tree view gets a bit long and enabling paging on it just annoys users because they just want to get to the correct folder, I provided a search box that only returns the custom folder content type (called "Customer" in this case) in the search results.

Add the Search Input web part and configure the additional query terms to include the custom folder content type and enable Append additional terms to query.

This will give you a search page with results for any folder matching the search string. E.g.

 

It is a shame you can't specify the item icon in the case of a folder content type in the list view but I could change the XSL in the search results (that will be another blog post).

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Oct
23

Today I saw a request for help that I had already thought would be something worth solving. (see my post http://www.wssdemo.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=296)

Here is the request:

I've created a list with multiple views and set the default view on an IT-managed MOSS 07 site.
I am looking for a way to display the additional views as links on the pages for this list, in addition to the pull-down on the right side.
Suggestions or help appreciated. I tried playing with some Web parts, but couldn't find any that did this simple task.

ILLUSTRATIONS (apologies for the crude rendering):

Current:

 Desired:

My Answer:

You have 2 options:

  1. Simple solution - switch the page to edit mode (from the Site Actions menu) and add the content editor web part. Then add static links for each of your views. Export this web part and add it to each of your views.
  2. Less simple solution – Use SharePoint Designer to add a data source for the views web service and then set the ListName (get the value from the Library Settings page url)

    Now you can view the data source

    Insert the selected field as Multiple Item View (must have one of the list views open and a web part zone selected, be careful not to select an actual web part or it will be replaced with the data view, CTRL-Z if this happens).

    Then you can filter out any view you don't want and change the layout

Change the Layout to the simple one (last in the list). Remove the xsl:if statement that adds the <br> code.

Set the filter criteria to remove the unwanted system views

 

You can change the Display Name to be a hyper link to the URL field (note: Text To Display field keeps syncing to the URL field so you have to set it back to {@DisplayName})

 

Then you can export the data view web part (from IE) and import it onto the other views.

Here is the final view…

Inquisitive minds might be asking what the Acount Manager and CRM columns are. This is a site based on the Enterprise Document Library template. We have a folder for all the customers we do work for (hundreds). I created a new Customer content type which is based on the folder content type and add these extra fields to it (including some segmentation and geographic metadata). Unfortunately we don't have the BDC connected up to MSCRM yet…

 

There are 2 things this solution currently doesn't provide:

  1. It doesn't indicate the current view. I'm working on that ;-)
  2. It will always jump to the root folder. I'm working on that also ;-)

There is a 3rd option but that involves building a feature and installing it on the server, something that I'm not able to do on our production serverL

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Oct
10
Vulnerability in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 Could Result in Elevation of Privilege Within the SharePoint Site (942017)

This is not a straight forward patch. You certainly can't use automatic updates to install this (which begs the question as to why it is an automatic updatable patch!).

First, the WSS 3.0 patch is Windows Service pack specific (on top of the usual 32 or 64 bit requirement) so there is a different download for W2K SP1 and SP2.
My install required a reboot, don't fret that SahrePoint doesn't start, then you have to run the config wizard.
There are a number of known issues that can affect the success of the patch install.
 
The MOSS patch has a prerequisite of the WSS patch and also has a number of known issues.
My install required a reboot, don't fret that SahrePoint doesn't start, then you have to run the config wizard.
 
Now you can understand why this patch was probably pulled from the September release.
 
Start your journey here
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-059.mspx and ready everything twice :-)
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Oct
8

This is now available via the Microsoft Connect web site to anyone who has a connect account (sign up is easy if you haven't yet).

https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=479

I have installed it on http://www.wssdemo.com/training if you want to have a look at the Collaboration training. You just need to login using DemoUser with password Training

Here is a screen shot of the Report Site which you won't see as a learner…

Note: -

  • Designed for MOSS and not WSS.
  • English (US) only.
  • Based on the SLK
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Oct
2
Here are 2 common problems that I see in the field and I know people spend a lot of frustrating time trying to track them down.
 
Error: Attempted to read or write to protected memory
This is actually a .Net framework 2.0 error
 
Error:DCOM Search errors in the event log
Fix: Configure DCOM. This KB describes the process
But you will have to search for the GUID (as listed in the event log error) in the registry to find the process in dcomcnfg.exe. It may also be a different account (rather than NT AUTHORITY NETWORK SERVICE) that you need to grant launch and activation permissions on.
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