Supported and unsupported scenarios for working with custom site definitions and custom area definitions in SharePoint

I don't really like this Microsoft KB - it is amazing how limiting it is - Supported and unsupported scenarios for working with custom site definitions and custom area definitions in SharePoint. It seems that Modifying site definitions - changes in Onet.xml , adding AllUsersWebPart element is an unsupported scenario as well... too bad. PS It seems that some people share my opinion - see SharePoint custom site definitions... I'm lost...sharepoint

WSRP .Net Framework and SharePoint

Netunity is a solution vendor which has build WSRP .NET Framework The WSRP .NET Framework is a comprehensive portlet development framework supporting the WSRP 1.0 specification for building compliant applications and content solutions based on XML standards and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Verified against the major portal vendors, the framework includes an extensive class library and Visual Studio Wizards to help you easily create WSRP producers and portlets. The framework does not require the installation of a portal or employ the use of proprietary services and content management systems.


I wonder if this also works with SharePoint - I haven't seen a lot of talk about WSRP and SharePoint except for some projects on GotDotNet - WSRP webpart toolkit for SharePoint and the WSRP web service toolkit. And what about webparts in the next version of SharePoint or webparts developed in ASP.Net 2.0

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InfoPath - third party tools

One of the major shortcomings of InfoPath is the fact that you need a full blown InfoPath on every client which needs to fill in a form. I guess that this is one of the major reasons why InfoPath hasn't really taken of as a new electronic forms solution. There are however some vendors which sell solutions to solve the full client problem:

AchieveForms

InfoView

NetXPert InfoScope

There is also a nice article from Microsoft called Sharing InfoPath forms with users who do not have InfoPath...

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2003 for Lotus Notes

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2003 for Lotus Notes has been made available - this tool helps in determining the size and scope of Lotus Notes application migration projects. The Analyzer consists of two parts: the Data Collector and the Data Processor. The Data Processor interprets the data from the Data Collector and creates detailed reports that indicate the complexity and scale of the application and recommendations on how to most efficiently migrate applications to Microsoft platform application environment. The tool is used in the pre-sales and sales phases and is the foundation for an implementation plan.

Quite a nice tool, when you are considering a migration from Lotus to SharePoint.

MSN Search toolbar released

MSN Search Toolbar has finally been released,... I have been using the beta for a couple of months and I have to say I'm quite impressed especially with Windows Desktop Search ....
Go download it

SOA - more then just hype

It is amazing how much talk there is from different vendors about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Unfortunately I have to agree with Richard Turner - most of the it is just marketing talk. SOA is an abstract notion - it is not linked to products or vendors, it should be generally applicable to any given distributed systems platform.

Richard puts it even a little bit harsher "The whole SOA/ESB thing is all hype, people! Once you come to realize and accept that, the world becomes clearer. You don’t believe me? Define what SOA is. Then try and find one other person that agrees with you wholeheartedly. If you’re lucky enough to manage this, try and apply your definition of SOA across more than one platform / technology. Repeat for ESB. Good luck!" (See

Does SOA Exist?

) but he also sees the advantages of Service Orientation.

I think the general concept is quite interesting but I'm not really sure when I will ever see an actual implementation of SO design. I recently took a look at FABRIQ recently - which combines service principles, one-way multi-transport messaging, queuing networks and ideas from autonomous agents into a single framework. Fabriq is no services framework but does show the complexities involved when creating a complete SO design. The Microsoft Patterns & Practices group has also published an “Enterprise Development Reference Architecture” which also provides some interesting guidance but which I think is quite complex as well.

If you want to know more, check out these interesting postings about SOA lately:

On SOA, Indigo and Services

Just what is an ESB, anyway? Part II

Web services standards can sometimes inhibit SOA development, some say

Radovan responds re SOA

SOA revisited (again)

Call increases for SOA clarity

Does ESB Exist?

Does SOA Exist?

The SOA reference model

What does SOA really mean? One big hype machine

"SOA" doesn't really exist, does it?

Maestro - Microsoft Realtime Reporting Server

Found this on Mauro's blog - "Planned Microsoft Realtime Reporting Server Could Rock Analytics World", ... It seems that Microsoft is going to launch a private beta of Microsoft Realtime reporting server codename "Maestro" this summer. Most of the BI tools which exists at the moment are mainly working on snapshots of data - realtime or near realtime reporting would be a very important move. A full article about it can be found at http://ie.bizintelligencepipeline.com/159907104 . Maestro will be based on a combination of technologies - SQL Reporting Services, SQL Notification Services and the Business Scorecard accelerator... I'm however wondering if it will use SQL 2005 as well as SQL 2000. And what about SharePoint since it builds on the Scorecard accelerator.

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SharePoint Portal Server e-mail alerts not send

It seems that I already published this before - but I got some emails about it so here's the link again

SharePoint Portal Server e-mail alerts not send...

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Internet explorer and PDFs

Did you ever notice that PDFs seem to open slow in Internet Explorer? I just found out why... it seems that there are in fact multiple requests to your webserver when trying to open a PDF. In IE 4.x and 5 it uses three requests. For IE 5.5+ it uses two. For a complete reference goto http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q293792

SharePoint issue list reports and Office 2003 web parts

Windows SharePoint Services contains out of the box an issue list which you can use to track change request or problem reports about your product. If you go to the issue list you will also notice that there are some reports available for these issue lists. The great thing about these reports is that if Microsoft Office 2003 English Web Parts and Components (Freely downloadable) is installed on the server, the report generator for an issues list creates rich charts for report types. When a user clicks one of the report types on the Report page (reporthome.aspx), the user is directed to reportrich.aspx, which displays the chart. If the package is not installed, the user is instead directed to report.aspx and a rich chart is not displayed.

The page which actually generates these reports is quite interesting as well, it is located in the Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033 folder and gives an interesting example about how you can use a sharepoint list as a basis for a graph generated with Office 2003 web components. One of the greatest flaws about the Office 2003 webparts is that you can only use ODBC datasources, it would have been a lot better if they used the data source catalog like the dataview webpart. I guess that if you take a look at the code in reportrich.aspx, you will get some nice guidelines about how to accomplish this.

Fabrikam released

Picked this up from Arno Nels blog - Fabrikam has been released. For those of you who don't know it, ...

In this solutions learning platform, developers at a fictitious enterprise created solutions for common business processes. FabriKam, a furniture manufacturer with about 10,000 employees, faces business problems and challenges not unlike many of today's enterprises. Starting with a set of realistic infrastructure assumptions, FabriKam developers built six solutions and four reusable components that address FabriKam's needs in innovative ways, with extensive use of Web services, XML, integration of front-end applications and back-end systems, and full use of the Office environment with which most information workers are already familiar. The FabriKam 3.1 Solutions Learning Platform represents the essence of the efforts of FabriKam developers.

SharePoint Document Library webpart - kick it off GotDotNet

I definitely agree with Stramits posting about the Document Library webpart - Document Library Explorer and GotDotNet : surprise it's not free sometimes. I think GotDotNet should only show webparts which are at least free to use. Off course it is not easy to keep these things off GotDotNet.

This webpart is nothing more than a marketing trick from the guys at http://www.professionalsharepoint.com/dle/ - because you can't use it without registering for a free trial. Hey,... maybe it is a good idea to start reverse engineering the code, ... (just kidding ...)

The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

Indigo on MSDN

It seems that MSDN TV is doing a series about Indigo:

Introduction to Indigo

Build services today

Indigo security in a nutshell

A must see for all solution architects...

Modifying site definitions - changes in Onet.xml , adding AllUsersWebPart element

All sites and areas in SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services are based on custom site definitions - these are all the files you can find in the 60 hive -
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\ directory (1033 is the locale ID for English - so if you have a Portal in another language you will another number). In this directory you will find a number of directory which contain all the templates for different site and area types. For a nice overview check out Heathers blog - SharePoint site definitions - Mapping files to pages on a SharePoint sites

One of the interesting files you will find in these directories is onet.xml - this file contains the bigger part of how your site/area will look like - common customizations for this file are

Specify an alternate cascading style sheet (CSS) file, JavaScript file, or ASPX header file for a site definition.

Modify navigation areas for the home page and list pages.

Add a list definition as an option to the Create page.

Add a document template for creating document libraries.

Define a configuration for a site definition, specifying the lists, modules, files, and Web Parts that are included when a site is instantiated.

The last option was something I wanted to try - including webparts when a site is instantiated. Basically I wanted all of the "My sites" to contain an extra webpart on the private side.
Steps I took:

Write a custom webpart (and even test it, if you feel like it...)

Add a strong name to the webpart assembly and deploy it to the GAC

Deploy the webpart on the server with stsadm.exe

The last step is modifying onet.xml for My Site (located in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\SPSMSITE\XML directory) - in this XML file you will find a Modules element and inside the Modules element the AllUsersWebPart element. So if you want that a webpart is added to a site/area by default you can add an extra AllUsersWebPart element
for your custom webpart. See example

<AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MiddleRightZone" WebPartOrder="4"><![CDATA[<WebPart
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"><Assembly>RecentDocsWebPart,
Version=1.0.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7f713d9ae1e786b0</Assembly><TypeName>RecentDocsWebPart.RecentDocsWebPart</TypeName><Title>Recent
Documents Enhanced</Title><Description>Demo</Description><PartOrder>4</PartOrder><FrameType>TitleBarOnly</FrameType><AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove><AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize><IsVisible>true</IsVisible></WebPart>]]></AllUsersWebPart>

This may look fairly complex, but is actually fairly easy:

Copy <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MiddleRightZone" WebPartOrder="4"><![CDATA[ and ;]]></AllUsersWebPart>

Add the custom webpart you want to add to the site definition to a webpartpage the normal way, and then click Export

The previous step will generate a DWP file - this actually a XML file, just take the contents of the file and paste it between the CDATA brackets

Unfortunately, this didn't work for the "My Site" so I tried it for the "Community Area" template and it didn't work for existing areas but only for newly created areas. Unfortunately this doesn't even work for the "My Site", even when users access your portal for whom the "My Site" still needs to be generated. I guess it will be the easiest to just open the "My Site" in FrontPage 2003 and add the webpart this way or create code which will add the webpart from code... I guess some people will call this YASQ, Yet Another SharePoint Quirk,....

RSS and SharePoint

Interesting posting on SharePoint newsgroups from Daniel Larson - he uploaded a powerpoint and the source code for a presenation about RSS and SharePoint.

For those of you who haven't heard about RSS - "RSS is an Xml dialect enabling syndication of content across the web. It is the internet standard for blogs, news sites, downloads, and more and is the technology behind the next big thing on the internet-syndicated communities. Syndication helps people and software communicate and interact across platforms and technologies much like Web Services, although the focus is clearly on human interaction. RSS 2.0 has become an internet standard that has a core set of functionality for syndication, and an extensible nature due to its simplicity. "

Windows SharePoint Services - Service Pack expected

This guy, First major change to SharePoint Service 2.0 - Service Pack 2 coming soon? , definitely seems to know more... but you can know find the actual details of what to expect in WSS SP2 on the Microsoft site. Some interesting stuff:

Support for IP-bound virtual servers

Support for advanced extranet configurations

Kerberos enabled by default

Windows SharePoint Services running on ASP.NET 2.0 (Whidbey)

Windows SharePoint Services support for Windows x64 editions

Consuming stored procedures with the DataView WebPart and SharePoint

A Data View Web Part displays a tabular representation of a filtered subset of a table on a Web Part Page. You can create data views from a large variety of data sources including databases, XML files, SharePoint lists, and so on.... These Data View Web Parts can be easily added to your Windows SharePoint Sites with FrontPage 2003.

However when you add a connection to a database, you will see that you can only consume tables and views from SQL Server - there is however a setting in WSS which you can alter to allow your webpart to use stored procedures.First enable custom query support for Windows SharePoint Services:

Browse to the Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration page.

Under Component Configuration click on Configure data retrieval service settings.

Check the Enable Data Retrieval Services checkbox.

Check the Enable update query support checkbox.

Click OK.

For more info check out the following articles:

Using frontpage 2003 to design customised sites

Using frontpage 2003 to build XML data driven sites

VS.Net 2005 beta 2 available

MSDN Subscribers can download Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation
You can also Order Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2
Download Visual C# 2005 Express Beta 2 for Windows/Console Development
Download Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Beta 2 for Web Development
Download Visual Web Developer Express 2005 Beta 2
If you have problems downloading Express or if you want to burn Express on a CD, follow the manual installation instructions

Go-Live - You can officially "Go-Live" with Beta 2 in a production environment

Another SharePoint, FrontPage, InfoPath & CMS link list

SharePoint Backup & Recovery Test plan

SharePoint Podcast (mp3)

SharePoint User Utility 2.1

Connect a SharePoint list with InfoPath

Creating InfoPath rules

SharePoint configuration analyzer

Building a custom SharePoint webservice for your InfoPath forms

Extending the save functionality in InfoPath 2003

FrontPage web packages & dynamic web templates

MCMS SharePoint list item placeholder

Fun with list templates and dataviews in SharePoint areas

Hotfix SharePoint language switch problem

SharePoint search webservice tester

Vignette Portal 7.2 and SharePoint

It seems that this release has all the things I actually want for SharePoint Portal Server -

The adoption of standards JSR 168 & WSRP - I know there is a WSRP toolkit for SharePoint on gotdotnet but never tried it ...

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Enhanced out-of-the-box search capabilities that allow users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources - Hey SharePoint can already do this - but more control over the search engine would be nice

Improved personalization. - SharePoint already has some nice personalisation features - I however think that multilanguage are definitely a part of personalisation ... unfortunately SharePoint is not pretty good at multilingual scenarios

Improved & tightly integrated content management system. - What can I say Spark just doesn't go far enough and is more or less a hack....

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