Mart Muller's Weblog

I’ve been looking at this for an hour, wondering what I did wrong:

I’ve created a new SPSite using a site definition. I wanted to connect this SPSite to the portal using the PortalUrl and PortalName properties, so the ‘Up to portal’ link would appear.

SPSite newSite = siteCollections.Add(strUrl,strTitle,"",1043,strTemplate,strUserLogin,strUserName,strUserEmail);
newSite.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
newSite.PortalName = "My Portal";
newSite.PortalUrl = "http://myserver/";

No error so far, and this is what the SDK was telling me...at least I thought. The link however, never appeared on my new created site. Ok, what was wrong with my code?

newSite.PortalUrl = "http://myserver/";
newSite.PortalName = "My Portal";

This was wrong.. just switch these two lines of code. Why? No clue. Maybe mention this in the SDK? For now, just my two cents (and an hour). With thanks to Arnold.

Three new LCS 2005 downloads from Microsoft to enhance LCS 2005 applications:

Presence Controls for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 (mentioned earlier)
The Presence Controls are designed to provide presence information and real time collaboration options to Microsoft Windows Forms, Web Forms and GUI applications that are based on the Microsoft Win32 application programming interface. The controls provide developers of these applications with the ability to drag-and-drop the control from the toolbox in Visual Studio onto applications and provide access to the capabilities of Communicator in an easy to incorporate manner.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=75febb65-cd20-44ec-a603-430e14d45fa6&displaylang=en

Role Agent for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
Role Agent is a sample Microsoft Windows service application that implements a role-based messaging agent for managing sessions and for brokering and dispatching instant messages between users and members of a defined group. The RoleBot sample application is built on the .NET Framework and is written in C#. The base component of this application is a base class derived from the Real-time Communications (RTC) API 1.3. The RTC API 1.3 contains a set of COM interfaces and methods for building real-time communications applications and the interop assembly used in this application provides a managed wrapper for the API.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2FB830B5-AA88-41B1-9AB9-235548D4270F&displaylang=en

Group Alerts Sample for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
The group alerts sample application provides a simple user interface for sending instant messages to the online members of an Active Directory group or distribution list and its subgroups. The names of available groups for alerting are stored in a configuration file between application sessions. The user may also type the name of a group to add an existing Active Directory group to the list. The sample application uses Active Directory as its catalog, but application developers can easily modify the application to use any catalog that suits their organization.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=818FF21B-4610-4072-BFA9-6FB7CBC75C81&displaylang=en

Via Bill English, a tip from Ward Ralston about how to write SPS user profile properties back to the Active Directory. Kind of dangerous action, but in some cases very usefull to update the properties in the AD that are normally never updated .

Anyway, the tip:

“First, schedule the profiles to import daily from Active Directory to SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Then, do this:

Allow users to edit some of their mapped AD attributes in their profile (Last Name, Title, Room, etc).  You can also make an HR group in Active Directory that has the edit profile permission so HR could change any user too.

Thirdly, use MIIS to query the profile database to extract those attributes on a defined schedule…….Something like this:

select ntName, max(title) as Title, max(sn) as sn, max(givenName) as givenName, min(objectGUID) as objectGUID
from (select ntName, propertyVal,
(case when propertyid = 13 then propertyVal else '' end) as Title,
(case when propertyid = 4 then propertyVal else '' end) as sn,
(case when propertyid = 5 then propertyVal else '' end) as givenName,
(case when propertyid = 1 then propertyVal else '' end) as objectGUID
from userProfileValue upv inner join userProfile up
on upv.recordid=up.recordid
where propertyid in (13, 4, 5, 1)) as tbl
group by ntName
order by ntName

Lastly, have MIIS write the changes back to AD so it they  are reflected on the next replication cycle. (MIIS also wrote the change to a MySQL HR database)

Viola!  You can have the attributes that users fill out in their profile written back to Active Directory.”

• Czech
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• Hungarian
• Norwegian
• Portuguese

Download here

For the people that have no idea what word breaking is:

Word breaking is the decomposition of text into individual text tokens, or words. Many languages, especially those with Roman alphabets, have an array of word separators (such as white space) and punctuation that are used to discern words, phrases, and sentences. Word breakers must rely on accurate language heuristics to provide reliable and accurate results.

Word breaking is more complex for character-based systems of writing or script-based alphabets, where the meaning of individual characters is determined from context. For example, in Japanese, a query that contains the term "??" ("Kyouto") does not match a document that contains "???" ("Tokyo"). The word breaker does not separate the characters in "???" ("Tokyo"), so the erroneous term "??" ("Kyouto") is not in the index.

For more information about linguistic considerations that may affect your word breaker implementation, see Linguistic and Unicode Considerations.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend the christening of boat one in Rotterdam of TEAM ABN AMRO that will take part of the Volvo Ocean Race, a sailing race around the world.

We’ve built a portal based on SharePoint for this team, so they can access documents and schedules everywhere on the world. Cool project and the reason why we had an invitation

Boat number two

…and of course the beautiful Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam

File Attachment: Introduction of the team (13166 KB) (sorry for my bad video recording )

Via InfoWorld:

“Microsoft will try to entice partners and customers to integrate functionality from its enterprise instant messaging (IM) system into their applications when on Thursday the vendor introduces new developer tools.

Microsoft will make available for download ActiveX controls and sample code that the company says will simplify the integration of IM and presence capabilities from Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 into business applications.

Microsoft hopes that the controls and code will motivate developers from both its partners and its customers to thread LCS functions into their applications, said Marc Sanders, senior product manager of real-time collaboration at Microsoft.“

A while ago it was on every sharepoint blog: Microsofts release of the free WSS application templates. Many talk about it, but Bill Simser did a great job with his application templates playground: try them out!

Thanks for the tip Wayne!

Yes we are looking for 29 SharePoint developers! So if you live in Europe and looking for a very cool job in The Netherlands please drop me a line!

What can we offer you as a developer?

• The best SharePoint projects
• Working with the latest technology
• Space to develop yourself
• Me as a colleague

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or for more info!

Is everybody working on SharePoint theme’s this month?  Heather talks about an article from Claudia in which is explained how to work with WSS UI’s, and yesterday I was joining a conversation on msn with half the SharePoint community (my sharepoint MSN list is growing ) about themes as well. Sig Weber is doing some extreme SharePoint theming and it looks like he is creating some really cool UI’s with JS and without FP.

Too bad there is very little about themes on MSDN, because there are a lot of options for branding WSS sites with themes:

• Applying a Theme to a Site Created with Windows SharePoint Services
• Customizing Themes for Sites Created with Windows SharePoint Services
• Cascading Style Sheet Guide for Windows SharePoint Services
• Working with the User Interface in Windows SharePoint Services

Via WSSDemo.com and eWeek we can read that the next versions of MS CRM and Axapta will use WSS for additional functionality.

“The Redmond, Wash., company is building out functionality across its MBS product suite—which includes Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, Solomon and Microsoft CRM—that will enable users to leverage WSS' prebuilt business process applications as a starting point for integrating components and, in a lightweight fashion, enable users to build composite applications.

The WSS applications—Microsoft announced 30 of them earlier this month—are preconfigured business process templates that encompass movable Web parts that users are able to manipulate using the WSS portal.

WSS, based on Microsoft's .Net Framework, is complementary to Project Green in that it provides users with role-specific interfaces for tapping back-end application functionality.”

I think a very interesting and simple tip by Todd Bleeker about how to open list items in new windows, something which is really bugging Sharepoint users. From his blog:

“Have you ever needed to open a New Window when someone clicked on a Document in a Document Library or clicked on a List Item in a List? Once again, the Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) to the rescue. What follows is another Dashboard Web Part (DWP) in my series that demonstrates how to exploit this powerful Web Part.

Import my CEWP DWP onto any ListView page (like AllItems.aspx) using the following steps (see how to create a favorite link that simplifies step #3):

1. Unzip the CEWP DWP onto your file system.
2. Browse to the ListView page of a SharePoint List or Document Library.
3. Replace the URL in your browser's address bar with the following text and then press (the Import ToolPane will show when the page posts back):
   javascript:MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane('5');
4. Click the Browse... button, locate the DWP you saved in the first step, and click the Open button.
5. Click the Upload button.
6. Drag and drop the Web Part into the Web Zone below the existing Web Part.
7. That's it! It works on nearly every SharePoint List Type (including Document Libraries but Picture Libraries).

Enjoy,”

PS: this action (add webparts to listview pages) is not supported, as mentioned before.. but who cares?

Great to see Jan is being interviewed in a OfficeZealot podcast!

“On this OfficeZealot.com pod cast we interview SharePoint guru and MVP Jan Tielens. Jan consults, trains and develops on the SharePoint platform. Jan has also led a number of community efforts to extend SharePoint. This includes SmartParts and Workflow Lite for SharePoint.

In this show we talk about what SharePoint is, how to develop for SharePoint and a number of tips and tricks.

You can download the Pod Cast directly: OZ Pod Cast in MP3 Format.”

I haven’t been able to blog last week and it surprises me about how much you’ll miss when you’re gone for a week!  Anyway, Angus mentioned that PDC was sold out! I’m going there (whahoo!) and hoping to meet a lot of people there. So don’t hasitate to drop me a line if you go there too or msn me at mart[AT]martmuller[dot]nl

Check out the list of SharePointers that will attend PDC and Tam Tam’s PDC blog with all the Tam Tam PDC blog entries together.

It should be great this year, so see you in L.A.!

Bil Simser has been working on a shared space on SourceForge for sharing SharePoint site- and list templates. Great idea, brought on the right time (after the MS release of 30 templates). From Bil’s blog:

“I created a new project site on SourceForge (yes, I'm not a big fan of GotDotNet and we haven't created my utopia of SharePointForge just yet) to accomodate this. The project provides an outlet for the SharePoint community to contribute and share list and site templates for the products under the Microsoft SharePoint technology banner (SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services).”

Read more

Daniel McPherson talks about how to reserve the friendly urls (the ones without the ‘C0, C1, C2, etc’ in it) in SharePoint Portal Server. He uses reserved Area’s – area’s that you have to create directly after creating the portal. I doubt about calling it ‘Best Practice’; it IS a good way to preserve the URLs. Microsoft says it’s by design – I wonder if SharePoint v3 will deal in another way with that…

On the other hand, I think it IS the best practice (of the ones we can choose of). Anyway, the steps how Daniel describes them:

“The steps basically involve creating a hidden portal area, then moving dummy areas with “friendly” top-level URLs under it, safely storing them away until they are needed:

a. With the Portal Open click on “Manage Portal Site”
b. On the “Home” dropdown, select “Create Sub Area”
c. On the “Create Area” page, in the title, type “Reserved” and click “OK”
d. On the “Reserved” dropdown click “Edit”
e. Open the “Display” tab and check the “Exclude from Portal Navigation” box.
f. Click on the “Search” tab, and ensure “No” is select for “Include in search results” then click “OK”
g. On the “Reserve” drop down, select “Create Sub Area”
h. On the “Create Area” page, in the title, type “Reserve1” and click “OK”
i. Repeat until the URL of the new areas created include a “C1” then stop.

Note: This will stop at “Reserve3”, this is due to the sample areas that are created with each new portal. You will want to move these under the “Reserved” area you created above.

Note: You may also want to ensure the permissions on the “Reserved Areas” are such that only Administrators have access.

Finally, to use one of these reserved “friendly” URLs you simply delete one of the “Reserved Areas” with the “Friendly” Top-Level URL, then, immediately afterwards, create the area that requires the “Friendly” Top-Level URL.”

Heather wrote a posting, referring to Molly who has started a discussion about the different views males and females have on designs. In summary, males make different types of designs compared to females. In order to that, it turned out that females experience websites in another way than males do.

At an anonymous website, we cannot do anything with this fact (the gender is unknown of the visitor). On a registered site (or intranet) however, this can be used! Ok, turning into a dangerous area here, but an interesting thought:

Is it ok to target a different design or UI based on the gender of a user?

Translated into the SharePoint (Portal) world: create two different audiences based on the gender profile property and show different content or interface (webparts). Hmm..that would be interesting.

Renaud Comte has released version 1.2 of the document library browser. This version contains a new webpart: Multiple Document Library Treeview.

What’s new in this version:

a new WebPart : Multiple Document Library Treeview

Read more

UPDATE:

Renaud's blog is currently offline because of a provider change. He didn't quit the SharePoint scene and he'll be back online soon! :)

Nice article by Paul Chin about intranet myths which might help you in deciding what is the right way to implement your intranet portal.

“There's no shortage of myths in the corporate world either — most of which are based on a lack of understanding. Over the years I've received many e-mails from readers with some pretty wild, and even dangerous, misconceptions about intranet development and management. In this article I'll take a look at five of these common intranet myths. “

In summary, the five myths:

• Myth 1: Intranets and Corporate Web Sites Should Use the Same Brand
• Myth 2: Internal Security Is Not as Important as External Security
• Myth 3: Building is Easier and Cheaper Than Buying... or Vice Versa
• Myth 4: More Features Means More Value
• Myth 5: An Intranet Will Improve Collaboration

Read the whole article

It’s just anorther property

To disable the !New tag from appearing next to new entries on a Windows SharePoint Services Web site, use the Stsadm.exe tool to change the "Days to Show New Icon" property to zero.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
• Type the following commands, and then press ENTER after each command:

cd /d %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\BIN

stsadm.exe -o setproperty -pn days-to-show-new-icon -pv 0 -url [Your Virtual Server's URL]

More info here

Good news for Mac users: Microsoft has released version 5.0 of Messenger for Mac. It will be soon on the Microsoft Mactopia Messenger page.

Messenger for Mac 5.0 introduces tabbed viewing, a new approach for Mac customers who use instant messaging for work and for play. Users may simultaneously access corporate and personal Messenger accounts and set a unique user status on each. The personal tab allows users to instant message (IM) with friends and family, while support for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 enables enterprise customers to IM in a security-enhanced manner via the corporate tab with colleagues inside and out the network.

The Presence Controls are designed to provide presence information and real time collaboration options to Microsoft Windows Forms, Web Forms and GUI applications that are based on the Microsoft Win32 application programming interface. The controls provide developers of these applications with the ability to drag-and-drop the control from the toolbox in Visual Studio onto applications and provide access to the capabilities of Communicator in an easy to incorporate manner.

Download here

There has been a lot of talking about what is and what is not supported by Microsoft when it comes to SharePoint customizations, mainly on definitions and templates. Mike Fitzmaurice tells us not to panic about making these customizations. In summary, customizations are not supported, but if you do track the changes and work out a PSFD (Premier Support for Developers) agreement with Microsoft, you will be ok.

I understand, Microsoft can not support customizations, on the other hand they say don’t panic and show a nice piece of customization in WSS templates. My point of view about customizations in SharePoint:

• Do not alter the original definitions, but create new ones with the customizations.
• Create your own scsignup.aspx (and register it in sharepoint admin pages) for creating WSS sites and alter the sites with code (create lists, etc). This way you stay fully supported.
• Only change the layout using CSS. I know many people will disagree with this, but in my opinion, this is the only way to keep consistency in your pages. You do not want to alter all the aspx pages in a definition, and no, do not use frontpage for this either. Especially when you working on a portal solution, you will not be the first one that get in trouble with custom SharePoint UI designs.
• In the case above, if you NEED to change the layout other then with WSS, stay with the homepage only, and create a site template.
• Make a good CSS template for your SharePoint sites and make CSS customizations an art…
• Hope the best for CSS anf HTML improvements in SharePoint v3!

Just my two cents. I know there are a lot of fancy designs out there based on SharePoint. In some cases its just fine, but you must keep in mind that scalability, consistency and the original portal vision are in my opinion more important then designs.

A very usefull tip by Maxim about how to provide self-serviced password management for SharePoint (WSS/SPS) with 0 lines of code. Something where we’ve been looking for a long time!  From Maxim’s blog:

“The solution that I came up with solved the following issues:

1. In the case where the Active Directory accounts expired and the user were trying to log into the SharePoint (WSS/SPS) the user will now be redirected to a screen to change their password.
2. With the use of Content WebPart and IISADMPWD virtual directory to it will provide end- users of the WSS/SPS site with self-serviced password management solution

That’s it! Congratulations, you just configured Self-Serviced Password Management WebPart with 0 lines of code. Of course this solution is not as elaborate as a custom written code but with the amount of time it takes to enable this functionality I think it is well worth the minimal effort.”

Via Renaud Comte and Raphael Londer, another article on SharePoint Impersonation using COM+. It’s been discussed a few times by Patrick, Maurice and others about how to deal with impersonation. This time, Raphael has published the code for this along with a good description.

Read Raphaels article
Download the souce

Wow this is cool! Microsoft released about 30 WSS applications to help organisations with certain business tasks. The applications are based on site templates and free to download. Check out yourself:

	Absence and Vacation Schedule
	Board of Directors
	Case Work Management
	Change Management
	Classroom Management
	Competitive Intelligence
	Employee Activities Site
	Employee Timesheet and Scheduling
	Employee Training
	Event Coordination

	Expense Reimbursement
	Help Desk
	HR Programs and Services
	IT Developer Team Site
	Legal Document Review Workflow
	Loan Initiation Management
	Marketing Campaigns
	Meeting Management
	New Product Development
	Performance Review

	Professional Svcs Contracts
	Professional Svcs Site
	Project Team Site
	Public Official Activity
	Public Relations Work Site
	Publication Editorial Review
	Recruiting Resource Center
	Request for Proposal Management
	Room and Equipment Reservation
	Travel Request

I attended a demo today from Cadac group showing Organice, a user friendly windows application for working with WSS sites. I think this is a good example of how to create a rich user experience using only standard SharePoint functionality.

From their website:

Ease of Use
Ease of use is a major part of user acceptance of any system. The Customizable user interface and easy grouping and filtering options make Organice the user friendly SharePoint experience.

Easy Navigation
The tree-based navigation offers a great advantage over the webbrowser. With Organice you can easily access frequently used SharePoint sites. Switching between several Sharepoint sites has never been so easy.

Viewing and Printing
The standard SharePoint interface does not provide any functionality to show the content of documents stored in the system. When a document is "clicked" the native application for the file type is launched. It would be too expensive for most organizations to have licenses for all users if they only need the application to view the content.

Organice has a built-in viewer that supports 240 different file formats. When a document is clicked the content is displayed in the "Property/Viewer" frame. Of course all documents can be printed this way as well.

Drag and Drop
Organice offers multiple select Drag- & Drop support for Document Libraries  fom Oulook, Windows Explorer and between Document Libraries.  Meta-data can automatically be copied when documents are imported saving valuable time.

Searching
Full-text search for meta-data is a feature only supported by Microsoft when Sharepoint is installed in conjunction with SQL Server. Organice offers full-text search for meta-data even when Sharepoint is installed on a standard WMSDE database.

Customization
In some cases additional custom functionality is required to implement specific workflow or back-office integration. Organice has a complete API to develop this functionality as extensions to the standard Organice program. Cadac Group provides several programming templates to make this task even easier.

The deployment of these extensions is as simple as dropping them in the Organice programdirectory, and they will automatically be loaded.

Multiple Document Templates
In Sharepoint users can only use one template per Document Library whereas a Document Library can contain multiple file-types. With Organice you can manage your templates (Companywide as well as project-specific) within Sharepoint sites.  When a user creates a document he can select a template from all available company- of project-templates.

Document Automation
The meta-data associated with a document offers a great basis for document automation. Out-of-the-box Office integration Microsoft offers however is too limited.

The Organice Office add-in makes it possible to retrieve meta-data from Document Libraries and other related list-items to be used in Office Documents.  

For Example: Simply by selecting a contact from a contact list in a meta-data field is enough to retrieve all address information from the contact list to be used in the document.

AutoCad Integration 
The AutoCad add-in for Organice offers CAD users the ability to open/save, check-in/check-out and edit meta-data for Autocad drawings stored in Sharepoint sites within Autocad.  XREF's stored in Sharepoint are automatically resolved.

Redaction is the careful editing of a document to remove confidential information. The Microsoft Office Word 2003 Redaction Add-in makes it easy for you to mark sections of a document for redaction. You can then redact the document so that the sections you specified are blacked out. You can either print the redacted document or use it electronically.

Sensitive government documents, confidential legal documents, insurance contracts, and other sensitive documents are often redacted before being made available to the public. With the Word 2003 Redaction Add-in, users of Microsoft Office Word 2003 now have an effective, user-friendly tool to help them redact confidential text in Word documents.

Download here

A while ago we’ve been doing a Proof of Concept for getting PeopleSoft data into SharePoint and back. In our case, we needed to get the data out of and old version of PeopleSoft, which was quite a challange. We used an iWay adapter to do that and that went quite well.

Today, Microsoft announced that they bought eight iWay application adapters for BizTalk. The adapters Microsoft purchased will help BizTalk Server customers connect more easily to third-party applications from Amdocs, JD Edwards, Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems Inc. and TIBCO Software Inc. iWay customers that have purchased licenses for the .NET-based adapters will receive a license for the corresponding Microsoft adapter with the purchase of Software Assurance.

Some information about integration with SharePoint using Biztalk and iWay on MSDN can be found here.

I’ve been playing with theme’s on my blog after I upgraded to a new version (dasBlog v1.8 RC1). The old (grey) one was ok, but I little bit boring, so I applied the new ‘Portal’ theme with WSS look . Thanks to Johnny Hughes!

After a tip from Paul, I also started using a evaluation copy of BlogJet, a Windows app to manage blog entries. Very nice tool to creat entries and worth the $40!

I made posting about the Biztalk adapter for Sharepoint (v2) a while ago, but got a tip from Adrian Hanza about a detailed comparision of the BizTalk 2006 native WSS Adapter and GotDotNet v2 adapter which is certainly worth reading.

Visit Adrian’s blog