InfoPath Holiday Poem

InfoPath with SharePoint 2010 Holiday Poem

Twas the night before deployment, when all through the farm,
Not a service was stirring, not even an alarm*.
The forms were all published to a network location with care,
In hopes that the Admin will map a drive there.

The secondary data sources were all snug in their connection,
While the Secure Store Service provided protection.
And the assembly all built, and placed in the cache,
Had just settled strong names with keys to match.

When out on the farm there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the VM to see what was the matter.
Away to the Windows Server, I remoted like a flash,
Tore open the Services and threw up the GAC.

The XML in the manifest and the method it knows,
Gave access to instantiate the objects below.
When, what did my wondering eyes see in the tools,
But picker controls and several “If” rules.

With a little rule driver, so lively and gay,
I knew in a moment it was hacked from the SDK.
More rapid than eagles the Conditions they came,
With dialogs and Actions that called them by name!

“Is Blank! Is Not Equal To! Is not a URL!”,
Setting a field’s value was all blown to hell.
“Begins with! Contains! This Field Changes!”,
Submit will not work with values in these ranges.

As workflows that before the wild tasks did fly,
When they meet with an obstacle,  we just mount a new drive.
So up to the production server they flew,
With an XSN full of schemas, and a DLL too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the prompt,
s-t-s-a-d-m someone did stomp.
I tried to be quiet, I tried not to yell,
“hey, now you can do that using PowerShell…”.

We added the template and with the .wsp,
Deployed the solution at a quarter-til three.
They asked if in a dilemma, what should they do?

Just pick up a copy of “InfoPath with SharePoint 2010 How-To”**!

Happy Holidays!!!

Steve Mann

www.SteveTheManMann.com

*another word for alert since alert doesn’t rhyme with farm

**Release Dates

Europe – Dec 3rd

USA and Japan– December 13^th

Canada – December 14^th

SharePoint 2010: Leveraging Visual Studio 2010 to Deploy Custom Content Types

lIt's fairly easy to create content types right within SharePoint itself. However, when in a development scenario, you need an easy way to replicate custom content type creation without having to manually enter site columns and site content types by hand. Luckily Visual Studio 2010 has a project for that. Generating  a Content Type project will easily package up site column and content type definitions into a re-distributable solution/feature allowing for seemless deployment between environments (e.g. dev, staging, uat, production, etc.).

The first step is to fire up Visual Studio 2010 and select File -> New -> Project. The New Project dialog appears:

In the New Project dialog  change the target platform at the top to .NET Framework 3.5.and select the Content Type template. Enter the appropriate name and location and click OK. The SharePoint Customization Wizard dialog appears:

The local site should be populated automatically but you may enter a different address if needed. Clicking on the Validate button will ensure the server is reachable. Change the trust level option to Deploy as a farm solution and click Next.

Select the type of base content type that your new content type should inherit. For document libraries, select Document, for lists, select Item. Click Finish.  The project is generated and displays the Elements.xml contents.

TIP: The Document content type actually inherits off of the Item content type. You may use the same type of hierarchical structure if you have a common custom content type that can act as a base for additional custom content types.

The content type structure is displayed but there are no fields. For each custom field you wish to create for the content type, you need a Field Definition. Therefore at the top of the Elements.xml  before the Parent Content Type comment but after the <Elements> tag, enter a field definition entry similar to the following:

<!-- Site Columns -->

<Field ID="{1B0D25D8-5A89-45C0-AE25-FA6726063EB2}" Name="CustomField1" DisplayName="Custom Field 1" Type="Text" Required="FALSE" Group="Custom Document Columns"/>

<Field ID="{3EE19A29-D064-4188-BFA1-BC23968BF1BC}" Name="CustomField2" DisplayName="Custom Field 2" Type="Text" Required="FALSE" Group="Custom Document Columns"/>

To create the ID, use the Create GUID utility which is accessible from the Tools menu. Select the Registry Format (option 4) and click the Copy button. Paste the GUID into the ID. Click the New GUID button for all subsequent columns (field defs). The Elements.xml should look similar to the following:

NOTE: The use of site columns is necessary!! Generating the fields as site columns allows you to use them in other content types.


The current state of the Elements.xml will generate the site columns but not place them into the content type. For that to happen, you need to enter Field Reference entries based on the site column definitions:

<FieldRef ID="{1B0D25D8-5A89-45C0-AE25-FA6726063EB2}" Name="CustomField1" DisplayName="Custom Field 1" />

<FieldRef ID="{3EE19A29-D064-4188-BFA1-BC23968BF1BC}" Name="CustomField2" DisplayName="Custom Field 2" />

     

Place these field reference lines within the <FieldRefs></FieldRefs>  tags. Your content type section should look like the following:

Rename the Content Type to a more meaningful descriptive name. Use the same name to rename the Content Type object in the project within the Solution Explorer pane as well as within the Project-level properties. Save the Elements.xml changes.

Double-click the Feature1 entry in the Solution Explorer pane and modify the Title and Description accordingly as well as the Feature1 item. Save the Feature1.feature file. Double-click the  Package.package file and change the name of the solution file. Save the Package.package file.

If you have a new list or library that will use the new content type you may want to include that within this solution such that they can be deployed together (see this post).

Right-click the Project in Solution Explorer and select Deploy:

The content type package is built and added to the SharePoint site as a farm solution. The solution is deployed globally as a feature that is available at the site level. The site feature will be activated at the root site collection but may not be activated within other sites. The site columns and content type are created accordingly on the root site.

BPOS: Adding Your Own Domain

I just posted an article on the RDA Collaboaration Blog in regards to adding a domain to your Microsoft Online Services subscription. It is located here.

BPOS: Setting up Email on a Blackberry Device

I recently have been working with Microsoft Online Services since it provides a viable solution for my friend's up-and-coming campaign for a certain elected position. When signing up for BPOS or one of the other online services, you need to select a domain. The resultant final domain becomes <domain entered>.microsoftonline.com.

Since we didn't want the user's email addresses to be so long like that, we added our own domain which we registered for public website purposes. I have the steps posted on the RDA Collaboration Blog here.
Anyway, after setting up the Exchange Online Services, my friend wanted to access the email from his Blackberry device which looks like it runs a flavor of Outlook. The interface, instructions, and messages were a bit confusing or misleading and it took several tries to enter the right information in the right locations to add the email to his device.

For example purposes, let's say the domain that we added was named "voteformyfriend.com". When I added the users, even though it requires a first and last name, I only used their first name as the user name (per my friend's request). So a valid email for this Exchange server would be steve@voteformyfriend.com. A temporary password is assigned and when the user logs into MOS for the first time, they are prompted to change it.

So the first step was to click on Add a New Email on the Blackberry. You are prompted to use POP/SMTP or Outlook Web Access (OWA). Select the the OWA option and hit enter. That renders a screen asking for a Username and Password. For this prompt enter the email address for the username and then the email password. There is a Show Password button on the Blackberry screen which will umask the entered values - highly recommended! - with the need for upper case and numbers it is real easy to type the wrong password with those micron-sized keys.

The request is processed and the first misleading error message is presented. The messages states something like "The username and/or password are wrong. blah blah blah...or additional information is required". My friend thought it was the wrong password but it wasn't. In reality additional information was required. Those words are a link that you need to click such that you can enter the additional information.

When the additional information page comes up, you are asked for the OWA address. Here we go. There were several iterations of trial and error to figure out which URL to use. The important URL listings for OWA within BPOS are posted here.

There is a seperate section for OWA Access and Mobile access URLs. The prompt asks for the OWA Server URL but it is a Mobile device. So which one to use? I think both will actually work as if you type the OWA address in a broswer it resolves the Mobile address (adds the Redmond server prefix e.g. red001), however, I used the Mobile device listing from that list making sure to use the https:// and not http://.

Now, the screen also prompts for a User Name. Now since we were in the Exchange settings I was thinking that this was the first and last name of the user I created in BPOS or even just the first name. Nope! It is still the email address (e.g. steve@voteformyfriend.com). The example on the screen domain/lisa.perry really makes you think it's the user you setup - but if you think about AD names and such it makes sense - but my friend is not technical..

Next, it asks for a mail box name. Oh boy. In Outlook and OWA on the laptop, the mailbox is showing the full name - so is that the mailbox or is just the username in front of the "@"? After doing it wrong the first few times, it is indeed just the userrname in front of the "@" in the email address (e.g. steve). The example on the screen does elude to this.

Entering this information correctly allowed us to easily setup the email account on his Blackberry device. It does take up to 20 minutes before the email starts sync'ing properly. Hopefully this provides some claification and saves someone some time. We searched online for the correct values to use but with no luck.

If you found this useful, please help support my SharePoint and .NET user group (Philly SNUG) by clicking on the logo below.

SharePoint 2010: Patch Warnings in Health Reports

I recently recieved two warnings in Central Admin in regards to upgrades:

• Product / patch installation or server upgrade required
• Databases running in compatibility range, upgrade recommended.

I thought this was strange since I just applied the August 2010 Cumulative Hotfixes. After reviewing the details of the issues I realized that the SharePoint Product Configuration wizard needed to be run. The details explain about running psconfig or psconfigUI - don't be alarmed - psconfigUI is just a fancy technical term for the SharePoint Product Configuration wizard. Usually patches and updates run that automatically but I guess I missed the memo that you need to make sure it runs after applying the hotfixes. Anyway, it is an easy fix and I am always confident that the wizard is doing the right thing.