Comparing SharePoint 2013 editions is a bit hidden in the SharePoint Online Service Description, so I provided an overview and deep links below.

SharePoint 2013 on-premise

• SharePoint Foundation 2013
• SharePoint Server 2013 Standard CAL
• SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise CAL

Office 365 plans

• Office 365 Small Business
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
• Office 365 Midsize Business
• Office 365 Enterprise E1
• Office 365 Education A2
• Office 365 Government G1
• Office 365 Enterprise E3
• Office 365 Education A3
• Office 365 Government G3
• Office 365 Enterprise E4
• Office 365 Education A4
• Office 365 Government G4
• Office 365 Enterprise K1
• Office 365 Government K1
• SharePoint Online Enterprise External Users

SharePoint Online standalone plans

• SharePoint Online Plan 1
• SharePoint Online Plan 2

Source: SharePoint Online Service Description, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj819267.aspx

You can find my slides and demo source code on Bram de Jager on TechDays on www.macaw.nl. 

Other colleague speakers are Arie Leeuwesteijn with Async and parallel patterns and application design (level 200 in Dutch) and Dion Olsthoorn with Bouw cross-platform mobiele apps met PhoneGap (level 200 in Dutch).

To deploy my environment(s) I use PowerShell. This is the same with configuring Workflow Manager 1.0. When running the Workflow Manager Configuration it generates the PowerShell command for you (see sample script).

Add-WFHost exception when configuring Workflow Manager

Although I use PowerShell scripts, it’s very likely to have the same issue and errors when running the Workflow Manager Configuration. When running my, slightly adjusted, script I got this error:

Add-WFHost : Could not successfully create management Service Bus entity 'WF_Management/WFTOPIC' with multiple retries within a timespan of 00:02:05.7093984.. 
The exception of the last retry is: The token provider service was not avaliable when obtaining a token for 'https://vm-sp-01.contoso.com:9355/WorkflowDefaultNamespace/$STS/Windows/'..
At C:\SPInstall\McwModules\mcwspinstall.wfm1.0\Ensure-WorkflowManager.ps1:117 char:19
+ $wfHost = Add-WFHost -WFFarmDBConnectionString "Data Source=$wfDBServer; ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  + CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [Add-WFHost], TimeoutException
  + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WFRuntimeSettingFailed,Microsoft.Workflow.Deployment.Commands.AddWFHost

Solution to “token service provider not available” issue

It seems the service bus is not available, which is a local server address. I tried disabling the loopback adaptor, but that didn’t work out. After digging around some more I realized my environment has a proxy server. The checkbox “Bypass proxy server for local addresses” was unchecked in the Internet Settings (Control Panel » Internet Options » Connections tab » LAN settings).

After ensuring the local addresses are bypassed, the PowerShell script worked as a charm!

Every machine, virtual of physical, has it’s own SID. This can be retrieved via PsGetSid.exe from Sysinternals.com. The thing is, it seems that the Domain Controller needs to have an unique SID within the domain. Although the domain members are allowed to have similar SIDs.

When I setup my topology I use a base image for every machine. Meaning these all have the same SID. After I installed my Domain Controller and second machine which I wanted to join to the domain I got this error “The domain join cannot be completed because the SID of the domain you attempted to join was identical to the SID of this machine”.

The solution to this is renewing the SID of the member machine. I needed to run sysprep.exe to change the SID of my base image, which I use to create the SQL Server 2012 and SharePoint 2013 machines. After running sysprep everything worked as expected!

The exception you receive is

New-Object : Exception calling ".ctor" with "1" argument(s): "UserProfileApplicationNotAvailableException_Logging :: UserProfileApplicationProxy.ApplicationProperties ProfilePropertyCache does not have 458839b6-4979-413a-a7a3-41d8564faea3"

The PowerShell script I’m using is retrieving the current context and initializing the UserProfileManager object. This should provide me access to the MySiteHostUrl.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ea 0
$site = Get-SPSite “http://my.contoso.com” 
$context = Get-SPServiceContext($site) 
$upm = New-Object -TypeName  Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager -ArgumentList $context 
$upm.MySiteHostURL = “http://my.contoso.com” 

The solution to this is providing the account running the PowerShell script sharing permissions “Full Control” on the User Profile Service Application.

• Open Central Administration
• Click Service Applications
• Select “User Profile Service Application”
• Click in ribbon the Permissions button
• Add account which is running PS script, in this example “xxx-spinstall”
• Select “Full Control” and click OK
• Run the PS-script again!

It seems Microsoft has named the Language Pack for SharePoint: Office Server 2013 Language Pack. Without any reference to SharePoint at all!

For now it’s only available via MSDN, TechNet and Volume License Center, try searching for “Office Server 2013 Language Pack”.

TIP: Make sure you select the preferred language before clicking the Download-button!

Downloads:

• Language Packs for SharePoint Foundation 2013 on Microsoft Download Center
• Office Server 2013 Language Pack on MSDN Subscriber Downloads

DIWUG thanks again for arranging the event and Sogetti thanks for hosting.

Subscribe via www.diwug.nl. Enter your email address at the top of the page and click the button Subscribe.

Trial editions and licensed editions of SharePoint, Project Server, and Office Web Apps products may not be installed on the same server.

The screenshot below shows the error message you get, directly after running the setup.exe.

For those who are wondering how to work around this, you can’t. The only solution is getting a license key and upgrade the Trial license to a Standard or Enterprise license. Afterwards you can install Office Web Apps.

Tip: Being aware of this I strongly recommend using the Standard or Enterprise license during installation instead of afterwards.

I did a session on extending the activity feed. Preparing the session was quite a challenge since I had to put in a large amount of hours due to NotImplementedException exceptions and other hassle. I hope it made the session worthwhile.

Below you can find my slide deck and demo code.

First question, how do I use these variables? This is pretty straightforward.

$Env:username

Second question, which environment variables can I use? Use the following cmdlet:

Get-Item Env: | sort Name

Name                           Value                                                                                      
----                           -----                                                                                      
COMPUTERNAME                   <computername>                                                                              
HOMEPATH                       \Users\sa-sp2010-Install                                                                   
LOCALAPPDATA                   C:\Users\sa-sp2010-Install\AppData\Local                                                   
PSModulePath                   D:\SPInstall\SPModule;D:\SPInstall\SPModule;C:\Users\sa-sp2010-Install\Documents\Windows...
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE         AMD64                                                                                      
CommonProgramW6432             C:\Program Files\Common Files                                                              
CommonProgramFiles(x86)        C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files                                                        
ProgramFiles(x86)              C:\Program Files (x86)                                                                     
PROCESSOR_LEVEL                6                                                                                          
windows_tracing_flags          3                                                                                          
USERNAME                       sa-sp2010-Install                                                                          
HOMEDRIVE                      C:                                                                                         
USERPROFILE                    C:\Users\sa-sp2010-Install                                                                 
SystemRoot                     C:\Windows                                                                                 
TEMP                           C:\Users\SA-SP2~1\AppData\Local\Temp                                                       
PUBLIC                         C:\Users\Public                                                                            
ALLUSERSPROFILE                C:\ProgramData                                                                             
APPDATA                        C:\Users\sa-sp2010-Install\AppData\Roaming                                                 
ProgramData                    C:\ProgramData                                                                             
PATHEXT                        .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC                                      
OS                             Windows_NT                                                                                 
CommonProgramFiles             C:\Program Files\Common Files                                                              
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER           Intel64 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10, GenuineIntel                                        
ComSpec                        C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe                                                                
SystemDrive                    C:                                                                                         
PROCESSOR_REVISION             170a                                                                                       
ProgramFiles                   C:\Program Files                                                                           
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS           2                                                                                          
windows_tracing_logfile        C:\BVTBin\Tests\installpackage\csilogfile.log                                              
TMP                            C:\Users\SA-SP2~1\AppData\Local\Temp                                                       
ProgramW6432                   C:\Program Files                                                                           
Path                           C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPower...
USERDOMAIN                     <DOMAIN>                                                                                      
VS100COMNTOOLS                 C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\                         
windir                         C:\Windows             

When upgrading to SharePoint 2010 these templates become a challenge. The sites based on the Site Admin Templates (.STP) will be upgraded. After the upgrade these will likely work, but you can’t create any new sites based the STP templates, because SharePoint 2010 does not support STP files for site templates.

Sites which are based on the Server Admin Templates (.WSP) are more challenging because some Fab40 templates cannot be used for creating new sites in SharePoint 2010. To perform an upgrade you need to install the templates which are currently in use in the SharePoint 2007 environment.

To keep the new SharePoint 2010 environment as clean as possible you want to disable the creation of new sites based on the Fab40. You could choose to update the XML files on the file system (webtemp files in 14-hive), but the downside of this is you need to update all servers in the farm and when a new server is added this needs to be adjusted manually.

So I started looking into the order SharePoint reads the webtemp files when the application pool process (W3WP.exe) spins up on initial load. I used Process Monitor to research the file access in the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\” folder. Based on the order shown in the screenshot below, it seems the “webtemp???.xml” files are loaded on alphabetical order. 

Meaning if I would place a webtemp XML file which filename starts with “webtempaaa” it would load first and equally the filename “webtempzzz” would load at the end. Since underscores “_” are often used I wanted to check that particular filename as well. It seems a filename “webtemp_” is loaded at the end, instead of at the start (what I assumed).

The next question is: “Does SharePoint keep the settings which it reads in the first files or do these settings get overridden by settings in files loaded afterwards?”. The answer to this is it only stores the settings which it reads first. Meaning if I want to hide the templates I need to add a webtemp file with the name “webtempaaaHideFab40.xml”. Within the file I need to hide all the Fabulous 40 Server Admin Templates.

The XML file below shows the contents of the “webtempaaaHideFab40.xml” file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!-- Hides all Fabulous 40 templates, filename needs to begin with "webtempaaa..." to be loaded as the first one -->
<Templates xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint">
  <Template Name="absence" ID="75811" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\absence" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Absence and Vacation Schedule " Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="projmulti" ID="75819" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\projmulti" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="BT" ID="75801">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Bug Database" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="callcenter" ID="75812" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\callcenter" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Call Center" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="projchange" ID="75818" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\projchange" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Change Request Management" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="comproc" ID="75813" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\compproc" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Compliance Process Support Site" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="CM" ID="75802">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Contacts Management" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="DR" ID="75803">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Document Library and Review" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="eventplan" ID="75814" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\eventplan" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Event Planning" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="exreports" ID="75815" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\exreport" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Expense Reimbursement and Approval Site" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="helpdesk" ID="75816" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\helpdesk" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Help Desk" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="IT" ID="75804">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Inventory Tracking" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="itteam" ID="75817" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\itteam" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="IT Team Workspace" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="JRIM" ID="75805">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Job Requisition and Interview Management" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="KB" ID="75806">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Knowledge Base" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="LL" ID="75807">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Lending Library" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="PATM" ID="75808">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Physical Asset Tracking and Management" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="projsing" ID="75820" SetupPath="SiteTemplates\projsing" >
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Project Tracking Workspace" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="RER" ID="75809">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Room and Equipment Reservations" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
  <Template Name="ST" ID="75810">
    <Configuration ID="0" Title="Sales Lead Pipeline" Hidden="True" DisplayCategory="Application Templates" />
  </Template>
</Templates>

This PowerShell script checks if the solution exists in the Solution Store and waits for it to finish its deployment job.

function WaitForSolutionToFinish([string]$SolutionFileName)
{
    $solution = Get-SPSolution $SolutionFileName
    
    if ($solution -eq $null) {
        Write-Host " -solution '$SolutionFileName' not found in solution store"
    }
    
    if (!$solution.JobExists) {
        Write-Host " -there are no solution jobs waiting"
    }
    else {
        Write-Host -NoNewLine "Waiting for solution job"
         
        $now = Get-Date
        $timeout = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(5)
        
        while ($solution.JobExists -and $now -le $timeout) {
            Write-Host -NoNewLine "."
            Start-Sleep -s 3
        }
        
        if (!$solution.JobExists) {
            Write-Host " finished!"
        }
        else {
            Write-Error "Waiting for solution job timed out! Check the Admin Timer Job status and ULS logs"
        }
    }
}

Visio 2010 and Visio Services

The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft Visio 2010 helps you to simplify complex (business) processes with dynamic, data-driven visuals and new ways to share on the Web. Visio 2010 visualizes processes by creating (process)diagrams, sharing these with colleagues and turn it into business intelligence. With the 2010 edition of Visio the product can be divided into a client and a server product. The client application is installed on the local computer of the information worker and provides powerful tooling for viewing and creating diagrams. Visio Services is a service application, which integrates with SharePoint Server 2010 and provides possibilities for viewing diagrams in a web browser.

Visio 2010 consists of three editions: Standard, Professional en Premium (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/visio-edition-comparison-FX101838162.aspx). The Standard edition has some basic features and focuses on View Only functionality. The Professional edition has most of the available features. It is likely this edition is most commonly used, because it supports a wide range of templates like floor plans for creating evacuation plans, pivot diagrams supporting hierarchical organizational structures and network diagrams for visualizing network topologies. The Premium edition has a specific set of features for Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), SharePoint workflow integration and Six Sigma templates.

Visio Services is part of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition. Visio Services is a service application that lets users share and view Visio Web drawings (*.vdw files). The service also enables data-connected Microsoft Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources. Because diagrams are shown in the web browser there is no need for installing Visio 2010 on your local computer. Only “power users” will need Visio 2010 on their local computer for creating and changing diagrams. After the diagram is finished, the power users can easily share the drawing with the organization. Basic exploration and navigation of these rendered web drawings are supported within the Visio Web Access (VWA) web part. Page designers can configure the user interface and functionality of the web part. The diagram renders in full fidelity in the browser if the person viewing the diagram has Silverlight installed on their machine or as a PNG if not; Visio Services renders seamlessly anything you can draw in Visio. Take a look below to get a feel for the experience:

Figure 1: Visio drawing rendered in web browser by Visio Web Access web part

Integrating Visio diagrams into SharePoint Applications

Visio Services enables you to embed Visio Web Diagrams into SharePoint applications. There are no limitations whether the diagram is static or dynamic. Depending on your skill level there are three ways of doing so (see Table 1). No matter your skill level, with very little effort you can add visualization to your dashboards and with a bit more page authoring or some coding you can add rich interactivity between Visio Services and other components on the page.

Integration method	Scenario enabled	Skill set required
The Visio Web Access web part	You can embed Visio diagrams into SharePoint pages.	You should know how to create a web part page in SharePoint.
Web Part Connections	You can enable limited interactivity between the Visio Web Access web part and another web part on the page, without code. A typical example of this type of interactivity is to trigger one web part to show extra relevant information about a particular shape, when it’s clicked in the Visio web part.	You should know how to create a web part page in SharePoint as well as how to set-up web part Connections.
The Visio Services Mash-up API	You can enable rich interactivity on your web part page by manipulating the different Visio web diagram objects programmatically. A typical example of this type of interactivity is to show custom visual overlays when the person viewing the diagram hovers over a particular shape.	You should know how to code JavaScript and/or ASPX pages.

Table 1: Integration Visio and SharePoint

The Visio Services Mash-Up API

The Visio Services Mash-Up API is the most advance integration method of all and requires development skills. It enables developers to access and manipulate the Visio web drawing, its pages and shapes. Some key scenarios are:

• Interacting with web page elements that don’t expose web part connections.
• Creating visual markup on the Visio drawing canvas.
• Writing custom handlers for mouse events within the drawing.
• Exposing diagram data, such as shape names and shape data, to your solution.
• Combining data from inside and outside a diagram to build dynamic composite mash-ups.

The Mash-Up API consists of four major classes, which reside in the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) Vwa namespace (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394600.aspx). The Vwa.VwaControl class represents the Visio Web Access (VWA) web part on the page. This is the starting point for development. The VWA web part contains a link to the Visio Web Drawing and shows the drawing on the web page. Like many JavaScript APIs, the Visio Services JavaScript API is event-based. The VwaControl exposes a number of events, which a developer can use to write event handlers. Important to note is the event handlers can only be accessed from within the onDiagramComplete event. So typically when the onApplicationLoad event fires, a reference to the VwaControl can be instantiated. This is where you want to set-up the handlers for the onDiagramComplete event and other various (mouse) events. Only then, when the onDiagramComplete event fires references to the complete object model are available.

Most of the business logic starts from the onDiagramComplete event where the (active) page is accessed. The page is represented by the Vwa.Page class which contains a collection of Shapes (Vwa.ShapeCollection class). You can either retrieve the current selected shape or iterate the shapes collection to get a particular shape (Vwa.Shape class).

Microsoft floor plan

Microsoft Netherlands invites customer and partners to visit their building located in Schiphol on a daily basis. The building is split up into a public community area (first floor) and a private area for employees only. The community area holds room for 15 conference rooms, with different capacity and facilities like a beamer and a Roundtable.

Microsoft wanted to improve the process for booking a room, by visualizing the community area and support the room selection process by highlighting rooms, which comply with given selection criteria. Selecting a room is based on availability, capacity and beamer and/or Roundtable availability.

The basics for starting development is creating the Visio web diagram. The community area diagram is created by importing a CAD drawing. This resulted in a Visio diagram showing the community area. By importing the CAD drawing the diagram was overloaded with a huge number of shapes. Every wall resulted in a one or more shapes. When joining shapes together shapes representing one room are created. This is a very important step because in Visio it is all about shapes!

In Visio it is all about shapes!

A single shape contains shape data. The Shape Data Window, showing all shape data, is accessed via the Data tab in the Visio ribbon. Figure 2 is showing the selected shape “Het Kantoor” and its shape data on the right in the Shape Data Window.

The next step in creating our floor plan application is adding data to the shapes. Microsoft provided an Excel sheet with information about capacity and facilities. This information is easily imported into the drawing and bound to the shapes. Visio supports importing data from different sources like Excel, Access, SharePoint, SQL and other sources by clicking the Link Data to Shapes button in the Data tab. The imported data has become a part of the diagram and is stored within the diagram. It is even supported to update the data in the Excel sheet and refresh the corresponding data within the Visio drawing. After the import the External Data window is shown. By dragging a row onto a shape the shape is linked with external data. In Figure 2 the row “Het Atelier” is dragged to the corresponding shape for linking the data to the shape. We will link all rows to the corresponding shapes.

Figure 2: Floor plan zoomed in on "Het Kantoor" conference room

At this stage the Visio diagram is ready. It is saved to a SharePoint site as a Visio Web Diagram (.vwd) file. This is a new Visio file format to support a data-refreshable drawing for use with Visio Services. With the SharePoint site up and running and our Visio diagram saved to a document library, a web part page is needed to display the diagram. A basic web part page with “Header, Right Column, Body” layout is created. Two web parts are added. The Visio Web Access web part is added in the “Body” web part zone and a Content Editor web part is added to the “Right” zone (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Web part page with Visio Web Access web part added to Body web part zone

The VWA web part needs to be configured by selecting the Visio diagram, which is stored in the document library. All other properties of the web part are unchecked in this case, because they will be set via JavaScript later in this article.

Figure 4: Visio Web Access web part properties

The Content Editor web part will be pointed to a JavaScript file containing the HTML markup for the panel on the right and all JavaScript business logic. The panel is used by the end user for interaction with the diagram (Figure 5). It shows room information when hovering the different conference rooms (shapemouseenter and shapemouseleave events). Users can use the Filter Options section to highlight in red the matching conference rooms. The Meeting Rooms section will list all available conference rooms by iterating the diagram and building a bulleted list. When clicking an item in the list the conference room is highlighted in light blue.

Figure 5: Screenshot of Floor Plan Application

Change the Visio Services service application configuration setting Cache Age to 0 minutes. This will reload the Visio drawing on a page refresh. Don’t use this setting in Production environment!

Getting started with the mash-up API

Finally we can start working on our JavaScript skills. First step is to hook up the Application event handlers and get a reference to the VwaControl object (Listing 1). The VwaControl object can be retrieved via the web part instance. Open the SharePoint web part page in source mode (in IE, right click and “View Source”) and search for “class=’VisioWebAccess’”,then back track to the immediate parent <div> tag and look for an attribute of the form id="WebPartWPQ?". Use this ID for retrieving the VwaControl.

// hook up Application event handlers 
var app = Sys.Application; 
app.add_load(onApplicationLoad); 
app.add_unload(onApplicationUnload); 

// hold an instance of the Visio VWA control 
var vwaControl; 

//---------------------------------------------------------- 
// Create a VwaControl Object and add handlers. 
//---------------------------------------------------------- 
function onApplicationLoad() { 
  // this is the name of the visio web part instance on the web part page 
  vwaControl = new Vwa.VwaControl("WebPartWPQ3"); 
  vwaControl.addHandler("diagramcomplete", onDiagramComplete); 
  vwaControl.addHandler("shapeselectionchanged", shapeSelectionChangedHandler); 
  vwaControl.addHandler("shapemouseenter", onShapeMouseEnter); 
  vwaControl.addHandler("shapemouseleave", onShapeMouseLeave); 
}

Listing 1: Hook up the Application event handlers and reference VwaControl object

After setting up the basics, it’s coding the event handlers. The most important event is the onDiagramComplete event (Listing 2). This is where the active page is retrieved and initial zoom level is set. To make sure the end user does not click the buttons before Visio Services is ready with loading the diagram, the buttons are enabled here in this event.

//----------------------------------------------------------
// Visio page events
//----------------------------------------------------------
function onDiagramComplete() {
  var vwaPage = vwaControl.getActivePage();
  vwaPage.setZoom(-1); // force the initial zoom level

  // Enable filter buttons
  document.getElementById('btClear').disabled = false;
  document.getElementById('btFilter').disabled = false;

  // Get all meeting rooms based on drawing.
  GetRooms();

  // Select shape when querystring has parameter 'room'
  var roomName = getQuerystring('room', '');
  if (!roomName.isNullOrEmpty())
    setSelectedShapeByLabelAndName(labelRoomName, roomName);
}

shapeSelectionChangedHandler = function (source, args) {
  GetShapeInformation(args);
}

onShapeMouseEnter = function (source, args) {
  GetShapeInformation(args);
}

onShapeMouseLeave = function (source, args) {
  // Could add logic for mouse leave event
}

Listing 2: onDiagramComplete event

The setSelectedShapeByLabelAndName and GetShapeInformation methods are not described in this article. Both are based on the same principles as described in the following paragraph.

Iterate shapes and retrieving shape data

As mentioned earlier, all shapes on the diagram are iterated to get all conference rooms and list those in the Meeting Rooms section. This is initiated by calling the GetRooms() method.

The room name is displayed in the bulleted list on the web page, this is stored in the shape data collection as shown in Figure 2. The shape data is a label/value pair collection which is accessed by the nextShape.getShapeData(); statement. To get the Shape object, the ShapeCollection needs to be iterated. This is an important approach to retrieve shape data in the Visio Mash-Up API. This is shown in Listing 3.

//----------------------------------------------------------
// Get all rooms from the diagram and provision in DIV-element
//----------------------------------------------------------
var labelRoomName = "naam";

function GetRooms() {
  // Get visio objects
  var vwaPage = vwaControl.getActivePage();
  var vwaShapes = vwaPage.getShapes();
  var vwaShapeCount = vwaShapes.getCount();

  // Search shape based on label and value
  var strHtml = "<ul class=\"visioRooms\">";
  for (var nextShapeIndex = 0; nextShapeIndex < vwaShapeCount; nextShapeIndex++) {
    var nextShape = vwaShapes.getItemAtIndex(nextShapeIndex);

    if (nextShape != null) {
      var data = nextShape.getShapeData();
      var strRoomName = "";

      for (var j = 0; j < data.length; j++) {
        if (data[j].label == labelRoomName) {
          strRoomName = data[j].value;
          continue;
        }
      }

      if (!strRoomName.isNullOrEmpty())
        strHtml += "<li><a href=\"javascript:setSelectedShapeById('" + nextShape.getId() + "');\">" + strRoomName + "</a></li>";
    }
  }
  strHtml += "</ul>";
}

//----------------------------------------------------------
// Sets the selected shape by shape ID
//----------------------------------------------------------
function setSelectedShapeById(shapeId) {
  // Get page and set shape
  var vwaPage = vwaControl.getActivePage();
  vwaPage.setSelectedShape(shapeId);
}

Listing 3: Iterate all shapes

Highlight shapes

When a user clicks the “Highlight”-button all shapes which comply with given selection criteria will be highlighted in red. This is achieved with the out-of-the-box method Shape.addHighLight object. An example is shown in Listing 4 which is a fragment of the custom Highlight method.

var selectShape = true;

if (selectShape) {
  nextShape.addHighlight(4, 'red');

Listing 4: Highlight shape

Conclusion

In this article we have looked at developing Visio applications running on top of Visio Services. The article provides background information about Visio 2010 and the new SharePoint 2010 Visio Services service application. Visio Services supports displaying a Visio Web Drawing (.vwd file extension) in the Visio Web Access web part. A developer can easily interact with the Visio drawing by using the Visio Services Mash-Up API. This is demonstrated with the Microsoft floor plan example. Hopefully this has given you an understanding of the Visio development basics and an example approach to creating your own Visio mash-up application.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ea 0

foreach ($grp in Get-SPFeature | Group-Object SolutionId) {
    $sol = Get-SPSolution -Identity $grp.Name
    Write-Host $sol.Name '(ID:' $grp.Name '), Count:' $grp.Count -ForegroundColor Blue
    foreach ($fd in $grp.Group | sort DisplayName ) {
        Write-Host $fd.DisplayName '(' $fd.Scope ')'
    }
    Write-Host
}

The output looks like this

Configure Beyond Compare as version history compare tool for Visual Studio 2010:

1. Open Visual Studio
2. Open Tools » Options…
3. In the tree on the left go to Source Control » Visual Studio Team Foundation
4. Click Configure User Tools…
5. Click Add…
6. Set the following fields
   1. Extention: *
   2. Operation: Compare
   3. Command: C:\Program Files (x86)\Beyond Compare 3\BComp.exe
   4. Arguments: %1 %2 /readonly /lefttitle=%6 /righttitle=%7

The arguments allow you to control the behavior of Beyond Compare. Labels to use:

• %1: Original file
• %2: Modified file
• %5: Diff command-line options
• %6: Original file label
• %7: Modified file label

Because solution packages are stored in the config database, it’s possible to download/export the WSP package with PowerShell.

Get-SPSolution | ForEach-Object { $_.SolutionFile.SaveAs($_.SolutionFile.Name) }

The WSP packages are stored in the current directory.

The forth column shows the support for read-only database. You can find more information on read-only databases here: Run a farm that uses read-only databases (SharePoint Server 2010) [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd793608.aspx].

<configuration>
    <SharePoint>
        <SafeMode CallStack="true" />
    </SharePoint>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode="Off" />
        <compilation debug="true" />
    </system.web>
</configuration>

By only changing the web.config file in the web application root, located in “C:\inetpub\wwwRoot\wss\<webapp>”, will not display detailed information in application pages (a.k.a. layouts pages).

There is more than one web.config file! Check your SharePoint Root folder.

Update the configuration show above in the “…\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\web.config” file and this will result in a .NET error page for application pages.

What you need is a centralized administration, like the Central Administration, controlling your application configuration. The Central Administration in SharePoint has two sorts of pages. The homepage (default.aspx) providing an overview and pages like Application Management showing a collection of links related to Application Management.

It’s easy to build your own custom administration site. The image below shows my own administration site. Do you see the resemblance?

Creating these pages is pretty straightforward when using the FeatureLinkSections class together with “LinkSectionLevel1.ascx” and “LinkSectionLevel2.ascx” controls. This web control handles the rendering of the links based on enabled features in the current context. The links are provisioned by custom actions as part of a (enabled) feature.

<SharePoint:FeatureLinkSections Runat="server"
    Id="SettingLinksV4"
    CellPadding="4" CellSpacing="4"
    Location="Contoso.SharePoint.AdminPage"
    LinkSectionControl="LinkSectionLevel1.ascx" />

The Location attribute is an unique identifier indicating the location where links are provisioned. The location is used in the custom action XML (shown below) to point to the location in the FeatureLinkSections control.

  <!-- Admin Page - Security -->
  <CustomActionGroup
     Id="ContosoSecurity"
     Title="Contoso Security"
     Location="Contoso.SharePoint.AdminPage"
     Sequence="10"
     Description=""
     ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/
         SiteSettings_UsersAndPermissions_48x48.png" />
  <CustomAction
    Id="ContosoAdmins"
    GroupId="ContosoSecurity"
    Location="Contoso.SharePoint.AdminPage"
    Rights="EnumeratePermissions,BrowseUserInfo"
    Sequence="10"
    Title="Contoso Administrators"
    Description="...">
    <UrlAction
        Url="_layouts/people.aspx" />
  </CustomAction>

The FeatureLinkSections control uses two views controlled by the LinkSectionControl attribute.

LinkSectionLinks1.ascx

Shows a 48×48 icon for the group and links are placed below each other.

LinkSectionLinks2.ascx

Shows a 32×32 icon for the group and links are delimited by the “|” character.

Visual Studio solution

I included the Visual Studio project containing the following components:

• AdminPages_Web feature: Web scoped feature with event receiver updating the welcome page and quicklaunch. The feature contains the following components:
  • AdminPage module
  • AdminPageActions custom actions
  • PBWebTemplate element
  • Event receiver
• AdminSite_Site feature: Site collection scoped feature containing the web template for creating the web. The feature contains the following components:
  • AdminWebTemplate web template
• AdminPageActions custom actions: All custom actions containing all links displayed in the central adminstration.
• AdminPages module: Provisions the adminpage.aspx and security.aspx pages in the web root folder.
• AdminWebTemplate web template: Contains the web template for creating the web.
• PBWebTemplate element: Property bag element with unique web template id

You can download the WSP package and source code at http://sp2010admin.codeplex.com/.

I wanted to create a sandboxed solution which loops all lists and updates the field values of items. Among these field values are taxonomy fields. Normally you would use TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue() for updating the field value. But within a sandboxed solution you are not allowed to use the Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy namespace.

If you are interested in the outcome: You CAN’T set the taxonomy field value for an item from a sandboxed solution. When updating a taxonomy field value always use the TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue() method. If you want to know why, enjoy reading!

Research

After reading about taxonomy and taking a closer look at what is actually stored in a list, I noticed a couple of things:

• When creating a taxonomy field, it actually creates 2 fields
• Note (SPFieldMultiLineText) field: Shown in the list as value
• TaxonomyField field: Hidden field in the list
• The actual value stored in the hidden TaxonomyField should look like “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>”
• The WssId is the list item ID for the local stored TaxonomyHiddenList, which is located at http://<applicationurl>/sites/<sitecollection>/lists/taxonomyhiddenlist/
• When WssId is –1 it means the term is not provisioned in the TaxonomyHiddenList
• Calling TaxonomyFieldValue.ValidatedString triggers an update on the TaxonomyHiddenList to provision the term and returns the validated string “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>”
• ‘The guid and label are those of an existing term in the Term Store
• The delimiter “;#” between wssid and guid is SPFieldMultiColumnValue.Delimiter
• The delimiter “|” between guid and label is TaxonomyField.TaxonomyGuidLabelDelimiter.

Testing approach

The general idea for figuring it this out was creating a farm solution first and get everything up and running. When successful completing the farm solution, rework everything to a sandboxed solution.

The approach for testing is split up into 2 parts and every part has 4 tests. Part 1 is updating list item properties, part 2 is updating document properties. The pre-requisite for the test is a valid term (guid and label) and the term exists in the TaxonomyHiddenList.

During the tests I’ll talk about the two fields mentioned earlier. For ease of reading let’s name the Note field “taxField” and the TaxonomyField “taxHiddenField”.

Every part consist of 4 tests:

1. TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue(item, term)
2. item[taxField.Title] with value “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>”
3. item[taxHiddenField.Title] with value “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>”
4. item[taxHiddenField.Title] with value “<guid>|<label>”

I’ll spare the details and focus on the outcome.

Part 1: Updating list item properties

When updating a list item the assumption is that the TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue() is the preferred way of updating a taxonomy field value. When updating a list item this results in updating both the taxField and taxHiddenField.

All four tests result in updating both fields. Although it seems to exclude the WssId in the field value of taxField and taxHiddenField for tests #1 and #4. This looks weird to me for test #1, because looking internally to the decompiled sources, Microsoft uses the ValidatedString value which includes the WssId.

The same result as test #1 is only achieved with test #4, because tests #2 & #3 includes the WssId in the taxHiddenField. This makes sense because we are explicitly updating the field value with the WssId.

For now it look like we are able to update the taxonomy field value in different ways. This is what we would like, because we could use the
item[taxField.Title] = “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>” within a sandboxed solution. Although it’s not completely consistent behavior.

Part 2: Updating document properties

Once again the assumption is updating a document via TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue() is the preferred way of updating the taxonomy field value. This results in both updating the taxField and taxHiddenField.

When running tests #2, #3 and #4 we run into issues. After the first run of the test everything looks OK. When running the test for a second and third time the taxField and taxHiddenField are out of sync. Both contain different values resulting in unexpected behavior!

Conclusion

I had planned to test the sandboxed solution, but didn’t got to it because the results of updating the document properties (part 2) from a farm solution were pretty clear. I could not find out what magic happens during the TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue(). But I did find out that something is happening, which is important for updating the list item or document properties!

In other words there is no other way of updating the document properties for taxonomy fields than
TaxonomyField.SetFieldValue().

Remember don’t ever use the item[“<taxonomy field name”] = “<wssid>;#<guid>|<label>” statement for updating a taxonomy field value because you can’t rely on it!

Simply start Word and type =lorem(3,10) and press Enter. 

This results in:

There are some options you can use:

• =lorem(p, l) where p is the number of paragraphs and l the number of lines per paragraph.
• =rand(p,l) provides the same functionality but using different text “On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed …”
• =rand.old(p,l) also provides the same functionality using different text “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox …”

Maybe you already knew, maybe not. I was looking for the “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox …” text and thought lets share!

When working on a “Yet Another SharePoint Gem” as Robin Meure called it. I stumbled on the SPBuiltInFieldId class and SPBuiltInContentTypeId class. When retrieving information like the CreatedBy field (also known as Author) it is very useful. Also when checking whether a item is based on a out-of-the-box (OOTB) content type. See exaples below.

Update: in addition to both SharePoint 2010 Foundation classes SharePoint Server has ContentTypeId class and FieldId class. Both are part of the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing namespace. Thanks to Jeffrey Schmitz (@DJeffa).

Here an example for the extension of the SPListItem class to retrieve the Author:

public static class SPListItemExtentions
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the author of a list item.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="item">Extended class.</param>
    /// <returns>Returns the author of the list item.</returns>
    public static SPUser GetAuthor(this SPListItem item)
    {
        string user = item[SPBuiltInFieldId.Author].ToString();
        int userId = Convert.ToInt16(user.Split(';')[0]);
        return item.Web.AllUsers.GetByID(userId);
    }
}

Another example for checking the base content type:

SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(1);
SPListItem topic = item;

// If item isn't the dicussion topic, get topic!
if (!item.ContentType.Id.IsChildOf(SPBuiltInContentTypeId.Discussion))
    topic = GetTopicItem(item);

Microsoft has provided a solution described in KB 2484317. The root cause of the issue is described as:

With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 we stored new Publishing Pages in a library called Pages. In SharePoint 2010 it has been translated to Paginas as the default for Dutch. The navigation code assumes that any changes from the default are noted in a specific property, which is not the case for upgraded Dutch sites that have been created with the 2007 default name.

The solution to this problem is pretty easy, a simple PowerShell script will restore your navigation.

$site = Get-SPSite("http://WebApplicationURL")
foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
{
    Write-Output("web:" + $web.ServerRelativeUrl);
    $pageslistid = $web.AllProperties["__PagesListId"]

    if ([String]::IsNullOrEmpty($pageslistid))
    {
        Write-Output($web.ServerRelativeUrl +" doesn't have a pages list id set - skipping");
    }
    else
    {
        $pageslistguid = new-object System.Guid($pageslistid)
        $pageslist = $web.Lists[$pageslistguid]
        $pagesurl = $pageslist.RootFolder.Url
        $pb = $web.Properties;
        $pb.Add("__PagesListName", $pagesurl);
        $pb.Update();
        Write-Output($web.ServerRelativeUrl +" set pages list to " + $pagesurl);
    }
}

This script reads a TXT-file with 1 users’ display name per line. Per user it searches the local directory and outputs the displayName and sAMAccountName in a semicolon separated line (easy for Excel extraction).

PowerShell script:

function ConvertUser($user)
{
    $search = New-Object DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher([ADSI]“”)
    $search.filter = “(&(objectClass=user)(displayName=$user))”
    $results = $search.Findall()

    foreach($result in $results){
        $userEntry = $result.GetDirectoryEntry()
        Write-Output('' + $userEntry.displayName + ';' + $userEntry.sAMAccountName)
    }
}

function ConvertUsers
{
    process{
        foreach($user In $_){
            ConvertUser($user)
        }
    }
}

Get-Content “.\Users.txt” | ConvertUsers 

TXT-file with users (filename: “Users.txt”):

Aaron Painter
Adam Barr
Alan Brewer
Alan Steiner

Make a TXT-file with users display name (see example below). Then copy, paste and run the script above should do the trick.

My colleague needed to remove the properties, this PowerShell script removes both properties:

# Remove properties
$wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity "<WebApplication>" 
$wa.Properties.Remove("portalsuperuseraccount")
$wa.Properties.Remove("portalsuperreaderaccount")
$wa.Update()

Write-Host("Properties count for " + $wa.Url +  ": " + $wa.Properties.Count)

I hope it helps those who want to undo their settings. To complete the script:

# Get current properties
$wa = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity "<WebApplication>"
$user = $wa.Properties["portalsuperuseraccount"]
$reader = $wa.Properties["portalsuperreaderaccount"]

# Write current properties
Write-Host("Properties count for " + $wa.Url +  ": " + $wa.Properties.Count)
Write-Host("Super user (" + $wa.Url +  "): '" + $user + "'")
Write-Host("Super reader (" + $wa.Url +  "): '" + $reader + "'")

SharePoint features and solution upgrading

This was a level 300 session about SharePoint features and solutions upgrading.

The feature and solution framework used for the deployment of custom SharePoint solutions was introduced in SharePoint 2007. With SharePoint 2010 some major improvements have been made to the framework to allow for feature versioning and upgradability. This provides new ways to deal with application lifecycle management.

This presentation covers the feature and solution framework, explains when to use the feature upgrade and talks about upgrading existing activated and non-activated features. During the session different demos will be build supporting the different scenarios.

You can download the slide deck here:

DevDays 2011 – Bram de Jager – SharePoint Feature and Solution upgrading.pptx

 Enjoy the video on my session on Channel 9!

Important note: This is (probably) not supported and I can’t guarantee your virtual machine is recovered. Please only use this how-to as your last resort! It might help you

What happened?: When the virtual machine (VM) crashed it needed a forced shutdown. When restarting the VM it came back with Recovery mode. I wasn’t able to start Windows normally!

Solution: Within VirtualBox (I’m currently using Oracle VM VirtualBox), or any other virtualization software, you are able to mount multiple hard disks. You need to mount the hard disk of the crashed VM to another healthy VM (which works normally). Pay attention to snapshots, mount the latest snapshot! Start the healthy VM.

What happens?: The healthy VM will pick up the crashed hard disk and starts scanning and repairing the hard disk. After repairing Windows will start normally and you are able to browse the hard disk and retrieve your files.

If you are having a lucky day? You could try to shutdown the healthy VM. Unmount the hard disk (which was repaired). And try starting your crashed VM. Now you know whether you are really lucky! It might start!? Good luck!

The following elements.xml is packaged in a feature.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <CustomAction 
    Location="ScriptLink" 
    ScriptSrc="~site/_layouts/project_name/js/custom-1.0.0.js?rev=20110413" />
  <CustomAction 
    Location="ScriptLink" 
    ScriptSrc="~sitecollection/_layouts/project_name/js/ jquery_query-2_1_7.js?rev=20110413" />
  <CustomAction 
    Location="ScriptLink" 
    ScriptSrc="~site/_layouts/project_name/js/jquery-1.5.1.min.js?rev=20110413" />
</Elements>

This results in the following HTML in your pages.

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/project_name/js/jquery-1.5.1.min.js?rev=20110413"></' + 'script>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/project_name/js/jquery_query-2_1_7.js?rev=20110413"></' + 'script>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="/_layouts/project_name/js/custom-1.0.0.js?rev=20110413"></' + 'script>');

Important to know is the order in the elements.xml is the opposite sequence in the HTML. Meaning the script “jquery_query-2_1_7.js” is depending on “jquery-1.5.1.min.js” and needs to be the last item in the elements.xml.

In the script link I’m using “~site” and “~sitecollection” tokens to change the link according to the site or site collection where the user is located. This is important when creating a generic feature used on multiple sites.

By using the “?rev=20110413” at the end of your link you can force the browser to refresh its local cache. A (script) file is downloaded the first time accessing the page. As long as the link does not change the browser does not download the file. By changing the query string you can force a download of the script when changes are made. The actual value “20110413” is todays date, but can be your own versioning logic.

The example above also has a version number in the file name, this is another way of forcing a download. I simply wanted to illustrate the possibilities, you probably will use either query string or version number.

Lessons learned / best practices:

• Order in elements.xml for <CustomAction /> elements is of influence of the order of script links in the resulting HTML.
• Use “~site” and “~sitecollection” tokens to control the script link.
• Use “?rev=20110413” query string or version number in filename to force a download of the file.

Session abstract: SharePoint Features en Solution Upgrading

The session is held in Dutch:

Het feature en solution framework dat gebruikt wordt voor deployment van custom SharePoint solutions is geïntroduceerd als onderdeel van SharePoint 2007. In SharePoint 2010 is dit onderdeel verder uitgebreid met feature versioning en upgradability. Dit is van invloed op de application lifecycle management strategie.
Deze presentatie gaat in op het feature en solution framework, wanneer pas je feature upgrade toe en hoe ga je om met het upgraden van bestaande geactiveerde en niet-geactiveerde features. Tijdens de sessie worden meerdere demo’s gebouwd op basis van verschillende scenario’s.

You can delete all keywords manually, but removing 100+ keyword results in a bad humor. With a nice PowerShell script the sun shines within seconds!

The script retrieves the MMS and loops the keywords and deletes them. When all keywords are deleted a Commit is needed to push all changes. Made a mistake? Rollback is also an option .

#Connect to Central Admin 
$taxonomySite = Get-SPSite "http://CA-url/"

#Connect to Term Store in the Managed Metadata Service Application 
$taxonomySession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -site $taxonomySite 
$termStore = $taxonomySession.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service Application"] 
Write-Host "Connection made with term store -"$termStore.Name 

#Connect to the Group and Term Set 
$termStoreGroup = $termStore.Groups["System"] 
$termSet = $termStoreGroup.TermSets["Keywords"] 

#Loop all keywords and delete
foreach($keyWord in $termSet.Terms) {
    $keyWord.Delete()
    Write-Host "Deleted keyword:" $keyWord.Name
}

#Update the Term Store 
$termStore.CommitAll()

When I placed the JavaScript in the web part I got a null reference error. The problem originated from the SP.UI object model not being loaded. Especially because it did work when I executed the script on the OnClick event of a button.

The solution is provided by the SP.SOD.executeOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded method. It will wait to execute the function you provide until the script you refer is completely loaded.

ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(ShowDialog, "sp.js");

Within my project I added a JavaScript file containing my method “ShowDialog()” to show the dialog. Within my web part I perform the validation and call the CreateDialog() method.

/// <summary>
/// Registers the javascript supporting showing dialog.
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// When calling this method, the dialog is shown 
/// to the user and blocks the page below.
/// </remarks>
private void CreateDialog()
{
    // Define the name and type of the client scripts on the page.
    string csname = "ShowDialogScript";
    Type cstype = this.GetType();

    // Get a ClientScriptManager reference from the Page class.
    ClientScriptManager cs = Page.ClientScript;

    // Check to see if the startup script is already registered.
    if (!cs.IsStartupScriptRegistered(cstype, csname))
    {
        StringBuilder js = new StringBuilder();
        js.Append("<script type='text/javascript'>");
        js.Append("ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(ShowDialog, 'sp.js');");
        js.Append("</script>");

        cs.RegisterStartupScript(cstype, csname, js.ToString());
    }
}

Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. ( HttpStatusCode Unauthorized The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized. )

This most likely has to do with the default content access account not having access to the user profile service application. The default content access account needs “Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers” permissions on the user profile service application.

Solving this is rather easy. See steps below:

1. Navigate to the Central Administration
2. Click on Manage Service Applications
3. Select the “User Profile Service Application” (note: do not click the name of the service application, because you will be redirected to management page)
4. Click in the ribbon on the Administrators button
5. Add the “Default content access account” to the accounts list
6. Select the “Default content access account” in the list
7. Check the “Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers” permission
8. Click OK

The agenda:

• Visio 2010 & Visio Services
• Linking data and web parts
• Real-life examples
• Summary

Today I needed the out-of-the-box (OOB) list of all profile properties. Below the full list of all properties.

[Update: link to TechNet article Default user profile properties (SharePoint Server 2010) and Default user profile property mappings (SharePoint Server 2010)]

You can’t install Visio 2010 32-bit version when a 64-bit Office application is already installed on the system.

Conclusion, if there is no specific reason for installing a 64-bit version of Office. Simply install the 32-bit version.

This can be achieved by developing a webpart which loops the user profile properties and retrieves per property the value of an user profile. The user profile which is displayed can be set in the webpart properties pane.

The C# code which drives the webpart is shown below. It is pretty straight forward and shows only the retrieval of the user profile properties and values of the user profile.

System.Security.PermissionSet ps = new System.Security.PermissionSet(System.Security.Permissions.PermissionState.Unrestricted);
ps.Assert();

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPServiceContext serviceContext = Microsoft.SharePoint.SPServiceContext.Current;
UserProfileManager upm = new Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager(serviceContext);
ProfileSubtypePropertyManager pspm = upm.DefaultProfileSubtypeProperties;

UserProfile profile = upm.GetUserProfile("CONTOSO\AaronP");

this.Controls.Add(new Literal() { Text = "<table border='0' > <tr><td>Displayname</td><td>Name</td><td>Value</td></tr>" });
foreach (ProfileSubtypeProperty prop in pspm.PropertiesWithSection)
{
    if (prop.IsSection)
        this.Controls.Add(new Literal() { Text = string.Format("<tr><td colspan='3'><b>Section: {0}</b></td></tr>", prop.DisplayName) });
    else
    {
        string text = string.Format("<tr><td>{0}</td><td>{1}</td><td>{2}</td></tr>",
            prop.DisplayName,
            prop.Name,
            profile[prop.Name].Value);

        this.Controls.Add(new Literal() { Text = text });
    }
}
this.Controls.Add(new Literal() { Text = "</table>" });

You can download the WSP package and source code at http://sp2010userprofilewp.codeplex.com/.

I created a site-collection based on the out-of-the-box Team Site template (STS#1). Made changes to the site by adding a new list FAQs, added a task to the Task list and added the Tasks list on the homepage. This is the basics for my template.

Next step is to save the team site as a template.

1. Click Site Actions » Site Settings
2. Click Save site as template
3. Fill in the fields
   • File name: TeamSiteTemplate
   • Template name: Team Site Template
   • Check the Include Content checkbox
4. Click OK
5. Click the link Solution Gallery in the “Operation Completed Successfully” window
6. Click the “TeamSiteTemplate” name to download the WSP solution file, save on your desktop

At this point we have a WSP solution file containing a template for a new site. We want to create a new site-collection based on this template. But we do not want to upload the WSP solution as a Farm Solution. We can create the new site-collection based a sandbox solution containing the template.

1. Open SharePoint 2010 Central Administration via Start Menu
2. Click Application Management » Create Site Collections
3. Select a web application
4. Fill in the fields
5. When selecting a template, click the Custom tab and select “< Select template later… >”
6. Click OK

The site-collection is created but has no template. Meaning it is also not provisioned with lists and libraries. We want the site-collection to be based on our sandboxed solution template. Next steps will explain!

1. Open the new site-collection URL
2. The “Template Selection” page is shown
   
3. Click Solution Gallery
4. Upload the sandboxed solution by click the Solutions tab in the ribbon
5. When uploaded, activate the solution by clicking Activate in the Solution Gallery – Activate Solution window
6. Go back to the Template Selection page (_layouts/templatepick.aspx) by using the Back-button
7. Refresh the page, the Custom tab should show up
   
8. Select the Custom tab and select our “TeamSiteTemplate”
9. Click OK

Now the site-collection is provisioned based on the sandboxed solution. The site is provisioned with the FAQs list and one task in the Task list which is shown on the homepage.

“Your client does not support opening this list with Windows Explorer”

This looks like:

A workaround is opening the document library in Windows Explorer. You would need a different link than the one in the browser otherwise Windows will use your browser for opening the link.

\\webapplicationurl@SSL\DavWWWRoot\sites\sitecollection 

For example we want to open the document library “Shared Documents” in the site collection https://teamsite.sharepoint.com/sites/teamsite1. The direct link would be \\teamsite.sharepoint.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot\sites\teamsite1\Shared Documents.

This is also useful when you want to look at attachments from a list. You can change the link and navigate the complete site collection folder structure.

“The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service. For more information, contact your server administrator.”

This is likely caused because the State Service Application is not turned on. You can check this in the Central Administration » Application Management » Manage Service Applications. If the State Service Application is not listed you know why the message is showing.

There are two ways for activating the State Service Application. One is using the Farm Configuration Wizard (FCW). But I prefer via PowerShell, below the script for creating the new service application and add to default proxy group. If you like you can choose your own name parameters.

$serviceApp = New-SPStateServiceApplication -Name "State Service Application"
New-SPStateServiceDatabase -Name "StateService_DB" -ServiceApplication $serviceApp
New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy -Name "State Service Application Proxy" -ServiceApplication $serviceApp –DefaultProxyGroup

More on TechNet on State Service:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee704548.aspx