SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Add a web.config Modification Using PowerShell

Duy Do — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:30:00 GMT

Following up on a previous post, How to Remove a web.config Modification Using PowerShell, in this post, we'll demonstrate the opposite challenge: How do I add something to the web.config using PowerShell?

Challenge:

Many Bamboo products implement Telerik controls and install a specific version of Telerik.Web.UI assembly to the SharePoint farm. If the farm already has a different version of Telerik.Web.UI assembly, this will cause a conflict. To resolve this problem, we need to add an assembly binding to the web.config to specify which version to use. However, adding the text manually is not recommended because it is not synced across the servers in the farm and will be lost if the SPWebConfigModification class is called (since that manual change is not saved in the SPWebConfigModification collection). This is where PowerShell comes in.

Solution:

In this example, I'll assume the Telerik.Web.UI version that Bamboo products install is 2011.2.915.35 and the version already installed in the farm is 2012.3.1016.35.

Note: We should always redirect all versions found to the newest version of Telerik.Web.UI on the system, for backwards compatibility of functionality.

We need to add the following assembly binding to the Web application web.config to resolve conflict problem:

First, open the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. From the Start menu, select All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products > SharePoint 2010 Management Shell:

Next, create the SPWebConfigModification object:

Descriptions of the properties:

Path: A string that contains an XPath expression that specifies the node. If the Type property specifies EnsureChildNode, the Path property contains the XPath expression for the parent node under which the node is created. In this example, the runtime element of the web.config file is placed in another xml-namespace, so we have to identify the namespace. Otherwise, that element will not be found.
Name: A string that contains the name of the attribute or section node. When the type of web.config modification is EnsureChildNode, the Name property refers to an XPath expression that uniquely identifies the node under the parent node, as identified by the Path property.
Sequence: A 32-bit unsigned integer between 0 and 65536. This property throws an InvalidOperationException if the number is outside this range. A sequence is used only if there is more than one modification of the same type to the same node or attribute. In this case, modifications with lower sequence numbers are applied first.
Owner: A string that specifies the owner of the modification. You can use the Owner property to track ownership of modifications.
Type: An SPWebConfigModification.SPWebConfigModificationType value that specifies the type of modification. There are 3 types:
- EnsureChildNode: Specifies that the web.config modification must ensure the existence of a child node of the node to which the XPath expression points. Value = 0.
- EnsureAttribute: Specifies that the web.config modification must ensure that there is a value for a particular attribute. Value = 1.
- EnsureSection: Ensures a singleton node. This node is only written once, even if multiple entities register multiple instances of EnsureSection to ensure the existence of a section. Value = 2.
Value: If the Type property specifies EnsureChildNode, the Value property contains an XML string that represents the node to be populated as a child of the specified parent node. If the type is EnsureSection, Value contains the name of the section. If the type is EnsureAttribute, Value contains the value set in the attribute.

Then, apply the modification to the Web application (replace 'WebApplicationURL' with the actual URL of the Web application):

Discussion:

Be extra careful when making changes to the web.config. Do not add or remove something unless you are absolutely sure what it is.
Note that Bamboo products are only tested with the Telerik version that they install. Therefore, if a newer Telerik version is used, there might be some unexpected problem.

References:

How to Reply Directly to a Discussion from the SharePoint 2010 Display Form

Ngan Ngo — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:30:00 GMT

As you know, SharePoint provides a powerful social communication tool called Discussion Boards. Think of Discussion Boards like forums, where an initial topic is introduced, and then users can provide feedback (called Replies) to that topic. But how does one keep the communication going without wasting time manually monitoring each topic? Luckily, SharePoint provides an alerting mechanism built into Discussion Boards. Users can optionally select to be alerted on a given Discussion Board or topic. Upon doing so, the user will receive alerts based on the configuration of the alert, most commonly when a reply to a topic has been created. The Alert looks something like this:

One of the benefits of the message is the Quick Links at the top of the window which helps users quickly navigate to certain areas in the site. The most beneficial link is the middle one that takes you directly to the Reply:

Unfortunately, the window that is displayed does not provide an option to Reply directly from this screen. To reply, you have to click Browse in the Ribbon, then go up one level in the breadcrumb, select the Topic, and then click Reply in the appropriate location. It's not exactly straightforward.

In an earlier post, I showed how you can manually add the quick reply button to individual Discussion Boards. In this article, I will provide you with the tools to deploy the Quick Reply to all Discussion Boards in the Web Application. To begin, you will need to download and install the free DirectReplyDiscussion zip file. Extract it and run Setup.bat.

Click on the Install button, then -> Select Web Applications to deploy, check on automatically activate features, and install component:

Once completed, you will see a message similar to below:

*** Direct Reply Discussion *****

"Server Name" : The solution was successfully deployed.

Open any discussion board SharePoint list type in your Web application with Direct Reply Discussion installed. In view mode, on the display form of a topic item, the reply icon has been added:

By clicking on the Reply Discussion button, it will directly link to the reply form for that topic:

Here is the result:

For those who may be wondering if this also works with Discussion Board Plus, yep, it sure does.

I hope you find this post useful for extending the capabilities of your SharePoint 2010 Discussion Boards. Please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Remove a web.config Modification Using PowerShell

Duy Do — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Some custom SharePoint products make changes to the web.config of a Web application via SPWebConfigModification objects to support their features. Sometimes, we need to remove these changes for a particular Web application (usually because the custom product is never used on this Web application), but it's not a good idea to manually remove the text, because the web.config would not match what has been set in the configuration database and might cause problems. In this article, I will demonstrate how to properly remove these web.config settings using PowerShell.

Challenge:

How can I remove a web.config modification properly using PowerShell?

Solutions:

First, open SharePoint 2010 Management Shell. From the Start menu, select All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products > SharePoint 2010 Management Shell:

Next, list all of the SPWebConfigModification objects that have been applied to the Web application. These objects are stored in the WebConfigModifications property of the Web application. In this example, you can see some of the modifications added by Bamboo products to support Telerik:

$webApp = Get-SPWebApplication WebApplicationURL

$webApp.WebConfigModifications

Now, we can identify a particular modification and remove it using the commands shown below. In this example, I'll try to remove the modification with name "add[@name=['Session']" and path "configuration/system.web/httpModules":

$config = $webApp.WebConfigModifications | Where-Object {condition_to_identify_the_object}

$webApp.WebConfigModifications.Remove($config)

$webApp.Update()

$webApp.Parent.ApplyWebConfigModifications()

The ApplyWebConfigModifications() method applies this change across the farm, so we don't need to worry about each physical web.config file at the server-level. That is one of the main advantages of using PowerShell to update web.config modifications.

If there are multiple modifications we need to remove, we can use a loop to do that. The following example removes all of the modifications added by Bamboo Telerik Config in a particular Web application (they all have the same Owner value):

$BambooConfigs  = $webApp.WebConfigModifications | Where-Object {$_.Owner -eq "Bamboo.SP2010.Config"}

foreach ($config in $BambooConfigs) {

    $webApp.WebConfigModifications.Remove($config)

}

$webApp.Update()

$webApp.Parent.ApplyWebConfigModifications()

Discussion:

The commands in this article work with both SharePoint 2010 Foundation and Server.
Be extra careful when making changes to the web.config. Do not remove a modification unless you are absolutely sure what it is.

Direct Reply to a Discussion in a SharePoint 2010 Display Form Using SharePoint Designer 2010

Ngan Ngo — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Built into the framework of SharePoint is a powerful communication tool called Discussion Boards. Think of Discussion Boards in terms of a forum, where an initial topic is introduced and users can then provide feedback (called Replies) to that topic. But how do you keep the communication going without wasting time manually monitoring each topic? Luckily, SharePoint provides an alerting mechanism that's built right into Discussion Boards. Users can optionally choose to be alerted on a given Discussion Board or topic. Upon doing so, the user will receive alerts based on the configuration of the alert, most commonly when a reply to a topic has been created. The Alert looks something like this:

One of the added benefits of the alert message is the Quick Links at the top of the window that allows you to quickly navigate to certain areas in the site. The most beneficial link is the middle one that will take you directly to the Reply.

Unfortunately, the window that's displayed doesn't provide an option to directly reply from this screen. You have to click the Browse tab in the Ribbon, then go up one level in the breadcrumb, select the Topic, and click Reply in the appropriate location. As you can tell, it's not exactly the most straightforward process.

In this article, however, I will provide you with instructions on how to create a custom action button in the Ribbon to create direct replies using SharePoint Designer 2010. To start, you will need to download and install the free SharePoint Designer 2010 product from Microsoft.

Next, we want to upload the images to associate with the custom action button. We recommend that you upload these images into a Picture library in the same site as your Discussion Board. To get you started, save the below images to your local drive, then upload them to your new Picture Library:
(32x32) (16x16)

Next we will open the SharePoint site in SharePoint Designer. The quickest method is to go to your SharePoint site, select the Page tab in the Ribbon, then under the Edit option, select Edit Site in SharePoint Designer:

Now that we have SharePoint Designer open, click on Lists and Libraries under the Navigation > Site Objects area on the left-hand side of your window:

Here we're going to use a Team Discussion list that I've created for demonstration purposes:

With the Team Discussion list loaded, in order to create other types of Custom Actions, we will need to use the Custom Action menu in the Ribbon UI to do what we are looking to do.

Now it's time to add the Custom Button to the SharePoint 2010 Ribbon. First, we are going to start with the Display Form Ribbon. To start creating one of these, click on the Custom Action button in the Ribbon and select Display Form Ribbon:

By doing so, we see the familiar Create Custom Action window pop-up. Input the Name you want to display in the Ribbon for the action and Description that will be displayed in the Tooltip of the custom action. Next, in the section Select the type of Action, select Navigate to URL and enter the URL with format: {SiteUrl}/Lists/Team%20Discussion/NewForm.aspx?RootFolder={ItemUrl}&ContentTypeId=0x0107&DiscussionParentID={ItemId}

Optionally you can also enter an absolute URL, but this is not optimal, especially if you have multiple Web Applications hitting the same content database:

Next, scroll down in the window, and in Advance custom action options, enter the links of the images we uploaded to the Picture Library. We are going to specify 32x32 images so that we have a fancy little icon to go with our button. We could use a 16x16, but that would be quite small, and since we're on the Ribbon, 32x32 is a better choice.

Right Mask allows you to assign permissions to who can actually see this custom action. This value comes from SPBasePermissions class enumerator. You can use this setting Ribbon.ListForm.Display.Manage.Controls_children. For more information, see this Microsoft article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spbasepermissions.aspx

Sequence number: The best practice is to use anything over 10,000:

Once we are set with this, let's click on OK on the Custom Action Wizard, at which point you will see a new item in the Custom Action section in Designer:

Now we will get a modal dialog window with the Display Form to which we linked our Custom Action. As you will see, we now have a new icon in our View Ribbon which shows Reply Discussion icon, as well as the title of the Custom Action:

By clicking on this, you will be able to reply to the discussion as well:

Here is our achievement:

I hope you found this article to be informative and helpful. Please let me know what you think, or leave a question regarding this material in the comments, and I will answer them as soon as I can.

In my next post, I'm going to implement a program for this feature. We will be able to apply it to a list template type and specify any SharePoint site you want.

Until next time, happy replying to your discussions!

How to Create a SharePoint 2010 Project Without SharePoint Server

Quang San — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:00:00 GMT

As a SharePoint developer, Visual Studio 2010 is essential for creating SharePoint solutions. One of the limitations of Visual Studio development for SharePoint, however, is that SharePoint must be installed on the same server as Visual Studio. If your development box is an Intel Core i7 (Ivy Bridge) with 16GB memory and SSD, everything is going to work great! But let's face it... most of us are given older machines with, say, 4GB memory and an old fashioned hard drive which slows the pace of development to a crawl. Management just doesn't understand why you need server-level performance to in order to develop.

Luckily there is a solution. Before we get to the solution though, let's clarify the problem. On my development machine, I have Visual Studio 2010 installed without SharePoint installed, and will attempt to create a new project using the template "Empty SharePoint Project."

Upon creation of the project however, I receive the error: "A SharePoint server is not installed on this computer. A SharePoint server must be installed to work with SharePoint projects."

To resolve this issue, I have created a simple utility which allows me (and will allow you) to create an empty project without requiring SharePoint to be installed on the same box, thus saving valuable computing resources. Here is how you can utilize the utility:

Download and extract the utility to your development box. You will see a similar folder structure as follows:

Run the program Bamboo.VS2010.Empty.SharePoint.Project.exe, which will be found in the root directory.

A dialog box will appear as shown below. In the New namespace field, enter the name of your project and select Create new empty template:

This will generate a new project package within the directory Out, including the file [projectname].wsp:

Using Visual Studio 2010, open your new project.

Within your Solution Explorer, you will notice the basic project structure has already been built for your convenience as a "Sandbox Solution":

If you are seeking an on-premises solution, update the attribute "Sandboxed Solution" to the value of False, which will allow you to work with the SharePoint Mapped folder. Note: Changing the project attribute Sandboxed Solution to FALSE will require you to have Farm administrator privileges on the SharePoint Server before you can deploy this solution:

That's all there is to it! Hope this article is helpful when developing in SharePoint Online with Sandboxed Solutions!

How to Fix "The webpage cannot be found" in SharePoint 2010 My Sites

Thy.Quach — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Working in SharePoint 2010, it's a common occurrence to click on someone's account name in People and Groups to show that user's My Site. An all-too common occurrence in this scenario involves receiving "The webpage cannot be found" response, as shown below. Seeing this response means that your server has not yet been configured for My Sites. In this article, we will take a look at how to fix this issue for your SharePoint 2010 server.

Issue:

When clicking on an account name, we will be redirected to that user's profile page, aka My Site. The problem occurs because we have not configured My Site yet.

Now let's look at how to configure the My Site in SharePoint 2010.

How to fix:

1. Go to Central Administration then click on Create site collections:

Create a sub site with the "My Host Site" template from the "Enterprise" tab:

2. Go to Central Administration -> Manage Profile Service -> User Profile Service Application -> Setup My Sites:

Regarding the My Site Host location, Type the URL which was created in Step1, in my case:

http://officeo14-chau:80/sites/mysite

Location: sites/mysite/Personal

3. Then go to Web Applications Management, and select port configure My Site -> Add our Managed Path:

Type the path which we created in Step 2:

Location: sites/mysite/Personal

--> Click on Add Path:

Then click on Self-Service Site Creation from the Ribbon, and select the On radio button:

4. After configuration has completed, return to home page, and go to People and Groups -> click on User name:

At this point, you will be redirected to the selected user's My Site successfully, without an error message in sight.

Using Common DLLs in Sandboxed Solutions

Quang San — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Office 365 brings a wealth of new possibilities to the development community. In a recent article, Hong Kong alone saw a 250% increase in new customers since the Office 365launch in June last year. For the SharePoint community, Office 365 provides the "SharePoint Online" program built upon SharePoint 2010 technology.

One of the many capabilities of the SharePoint 2010 technology is the ability to create visual components called Web Parts to display various bits of information. SharePoint Online provides this capability, although in a limited capacity called "Sandbox Solutions." For more information about Sandbox Solutions and their capabilities (and limitations) see Sandbox Solution Considerations by MSDN, and Understanding the SharePoint 2010 Sandbox Limitations by Wictor Wilen.

As in any Web Part solution, it is built upon a collection of files and assemblies. In this article, I will discuss how you can create a Common Assembly that you can reuse in all of your solutions. NOTE: Although "common assembly" commonly means you can have just one instance of the assembly and reference it from many projects, one of the limitations of Sandbox Solutions is that they cannot reference another solution. This instead allows you to pre-build an assembly and quickly include it in multiple projects, saving valuable time.

So, how do you reference a common assembly in your package? I will use a simple example where the assembly outputs a Namespace text in a Web Part. In this article, I am using Visual Studio 2010 (Ultimate) on a machine where SharePoint is installed.

To start, you need to first create a Visual Studio solution similar to what is shown below:

The project Unknown.CommonLibrary is currently an empty SharePoint 2010 Project that will store all our common codes.

The project Unknown.HelloSharePointOnline is also an empty SharePoint 2010 Project that will display the results of the Unknown.CommonLibrary results in a Web Part.

I then create the file UnknownConstants.cs within the Unknown.CommonLibrary project:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

 

namespace Unknown.CommonLibrary

{

    public class UnknownConstants

    {

        private const string UNKNOWN_NAMESPACE = "Unknown.CommonLibrary";

 

        public UnknownConstants()

        {

        }

 

        public static string GetCommonNamespace()

        {

            return UNKNOWN_NAMESPACE;

        }        

    }

}

Within the Unknown.HelloSharePointOnline project, I also created a file called HelloWebPart.cs:

using System;

using System.ComponentModel;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

 

namespace Unknown.HelloSharePointOnline.HelloWebPart

{

    [ToolboxItemAttribute(false)]

    public class HelloWebPart : WebPart

    {

        protected override void CreateChildControls()

        {

            string strHello = string.Format("Welcome {0} to SharePoint Online", Unknown.CommonLibrary.UnknownConstants.GetCommonNamespace());

            this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(strHello));

        }

    }

}

Now within the project Unknown.HelloSharePointOnline, click on the node Package and select the Advanced tab at the bottom of the panel:

Click Add and choose "Add Assembly from Project Output...":

Select "Unknown.CommonLibrary" with Safe Controls as shown below:

After that, right click at Unknown.HelloSharePointOnline project and select Package:

Your final output will be a *.wsp file. Open your Solutions Gallery in SharePoint Online and upload your new solution. Add your new HellowWebPart solution to the page and you will see it output the following:

I hope this article is helpful as you're developing for SharePoint Online!

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Fix 'Unable to display this Web Part' when Working with External Lists in SharePoint 2010

Thy.Quach — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Contrary to the behavior of the BDC in SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 creates Business Connectivity Services (BCS) through SharePoint Designer 2010, and not via Central Administration. This can be pretty strange for someone who's used to the SharePoint 2007 method, and you may encounter some issues while configuring the BCS. In this article, we'll take a look at how to fix some problems that may arise when you work with an External List or connect to SQL Server 2008 through the BCS features.

Challenge:

One issue you may encounter involves the following message:

"Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator. Correlation ID: ...........".

I should mention that I have also encountered this error when working with an External List.

Solution:

To solve this problem, we will need to execute a PowerShell cmdlet and change the configuration.

Step by step:

1. Open SharePoint 2010 Management Shell: Start -> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products:

First type the following command: "Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy"

You will see a list of services in the form of proxy applications, including Business Data Connectivity Service.

2. Next type the command:
Get-Database-ThrottleType SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig-Scope Items-ServiceApplicationProxy 25572329 ... (Depending on the service's GUID BDC)

3. Now, you change the throttle.
$ Db = Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig-Scope ThrottleType Items Database-GUID-ServiceApplicationProxy ..
Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig-Identity $ Db-8000-default maximum 6000

After completing the three steps above, you can connect to SQL Server 2008 through the BCS features successfully, without an error message in sight.

See Also:

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Create a Custom Page Layout for Publishing Sites Using Visual Studio 2010

cammach — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:00:00 GMT

As stated in an MSDN article, "Publishing in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is fundamentally a means of authoring and displaying information by using a set of templates." An Office article adds: "Each publishing page is associated with a page layout. The page layout controls the look and feel of the publishing pages that are created from it. It also defines the fields where contributors can enter various types of article content, such as article titles, graphics, quotations, and unstructured text." Creating a custom page layout using SharePoint Designer is very straightforward, presenting users with a "what you see is what you get" UI, but using Visual Studio offers its own distinct advantages to creating custom page layouts.

Let's explore!

Challenge:

How do I create a custom page layout for a Publishing Site using Visual Studio 2010?

Solution:

I. Create a new content type

Your new content type must inherit from the Page content type.

Open Visual Studio 2010 (which features integrated Developer Tools for SharePoint 2010) and create a new Empty SharePoint Project:

Click OK when you finish naming your project, and remember to select your deployment type as farm solution.

Next, right-click on your project name in the Solution Explorer window, then click Add -> New Item. In the Add New Item dialog, choose the Content Type project item template:

Click Add when you finish.

The SharePoint Developer Tool will ask which parent content type your content type derives from. Choose the Page content type:

The SharePoint Developer Tool will generate an element.xml file which contains your page content type definition. Note that your content type ID was generated by the SharePoint Developer Tool based on its parent's ID, so it should be kept as is.

Next, add some site columns to your element.xml file (these will be used by your page content type).

See my example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

  <!-- new site column for custom page layout named Title -->

  <Field ID="{7024BCAE-DBB8-4E09-88E6-49D3B22C9111}"             

  Name="BBTitle" DisplayName="Title" Group="BambooSiteColumn"

  Type="Text" Required="FALSE" Sealed="FALSE" Hidden="FALSE" />   

 

  <!-- new site column for custom page layout named Header -->

  <Field ID="{4837C657-45B0-45A2-A548-945DB9D9189F}"

  Name="BBHeader" DisplayName="Header" Group="BambooSiteColumn"

  Type="HTML" Required="FALSE" Sealed="FALSE" Hidden="FALSE" />

 

  <!-- new site column for custom page layout named Body -->

  <Field ID="{6C736E06-56C1-4AA1-AB0F-4712FAA2A8C4}"

  Name="BBBody" DisplayName="Body" Group="BambooSiteColumn"

  Type="HTML" Required="FALSE" Sealed="FALSE" Hidden="FALSE" />

 

  <!-- new site column for custom page layout named Footer -->

  <Field ID="{933EB014-B49D-4358-9043-1ECC565D283F}"

  Name="BBFooter" DisplayName="Footer" Group="BambooSiteColumn"

  Type="HTML" Required="FALSE" Sealed="FALSE" Hidden="FALSE" />

 

  <!-- Parent ContentType: Page (0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF39) -->

  <ContentType ID="0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900cfafe608e5a04292b41c5df1ac147f0b"

               Name="MyPageContentType"

               Group="Bamboo Custom Content Types"

               Description="My page content type for my custom page layout"

               Inherits="TRUE"

               Version="0">

    <FieldRefs>

      <FieldRef ID="{7024BCAE-DBB8-4E09-88E6-49D3B22C9111}" Name="BBTitle" />

      <FieldRef ID="{4837C657-45B0-45A2-A548-945DB9D9189F}" Name="BBHeader" />

      <FieldRef ID="{6C736E06-56C1-4AA1-AB0F-4712FAA2A8C4}" Name="BBBody" />

      <FieldRef ID="{933EB014-B49D-4358-9043-1ECC565D283F}" Name="BBFooter" />

    </FieldRefs>

  </ContentType>

</Elements>

In my example, I have four site columns which are referenced by four FieldRef elements inside ContentType element. What you should note here is the FieldFef's ID and Name should match the Field's ID and Name (the site columns ID and Name)

Note: To generate a GUID, you can use the GUID Generator tool in Visual Studio 2010 (go to Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 -> Microsoft Windows SDK Tools -> GUID Generator).

II. Create a custom page layout

It's an application page (.aspx) which will be used as a page template in a Publishing site.

To create one, right-click on your project name in the Solution Explorer window, then click Add -> New Item. In the Add New Item dialog, choose the Model project item template:

Click Add when you've finished.

The SharePoint Developer Tool will generate two files: element.xml and Sample.txt. Rename Sample.txt as an aspx page (my example is PublishingPageLayout.aspx).

Your project structure should now look like the image below:

Next, open your .aspx file and add content to it:

<%@ Page language="C#" Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PublishingLayoutPage" %>

<%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" TagPrefix="SharePointWebControls" %>

<%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls" TagPrefix="PublishingWebControls" %>

 

<asp:Content runat="server" contentplaceholderid="PlaceHolderPageTitle">

    <SharePointWebControls:FieldValue id="PageTitle" FieldName="Title" runat="server"/>

</asp:Content>

 

<asp:Content runat="server" contentplaceholderid="PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea">

    <SharePointWebControls:TextField ID="TitleField" FieldName="Title" runat="server" />

</asp:Content>

 

<asp:Content runat="server" contentplaceholderid="PlaceHolderMain"> 

    <SharePointWebControls:TextField ID="TextField1" FieldName="BBTitle" runat="server"/>

    <br />

    <PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField ID="RichHtmlField1" FieldName="BBHeader" runat="server"/>

    <br />

    <PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField ID="RichHtmlField2" FieldName="BBBody" runat="server"/>

    <br />

    <PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField ID="RichHtmlField3" FieldName="BBFooter" runat="server"/>

</asp:Content>

Your page layout should inherit the PublishingLayoutPage class which is contained in namespace Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls in the assembly Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing. Remember to add a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing in your project. It is found at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. The controls, such as SharePointWebControls (TextField) and PublishingWebControls (RichHtmlField), should reference the site columns defined in your page content type.

Next, open your element.xml in your Model folder and add a File element inside the Module element to refer to your page layout:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

  <Module Name="MyModel" RootWebOnly="TRUE" Url="_catalogs/masterpage">

    <File Path="MyModel\PublishingPageLayout.aspx" Url="MyModel/PublishingPageLayout.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >

      <Property Name="PublishingAssociatedContentType" Value=";#MyPageContentType;#0x010100C568DB52D9D0A14D9B2FDCC96666E9F2007948130EC3DB064584E219954237AF3900cfafe608e5a04292b41c5df1ac147f0b;#" />

      <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:cmscore,contenttype_pagelayout_name;" />

      <Property Name="Title" Value="My Bamboo Publish Page Layout" />

    </File>

  </Module>

</Elements>

The module needs to be configured to provision the file as content in the library, so we set the File's Type attribute to GhostableInLibrary.

The Property elements are used to specify the values of certain metadata fields in the Master Page Gallery.

Note: The property, with name PublishingAssociatedContenttype, should have its Value refer to your page content type. Its value is separated by character ;# (first part is content type name, and second part is content type ID).

That's all there is to it. Now, build your project and deploy it to your farm servers (or press F5 to test and debug the project on your selected Web application).

III. Using custom page layout

To use your custom page layout in a Publishing Site, first activate the feature at your site collection.

Go to Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Site collection features (under Site Collection Administration section):

Then, create a Publishing Site (if you don't have one) by going to Site Actions -> New Site:

Note: If you can't find the Publishing Site template, go to your Site collection features and activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature:

Your publishing site should look like the image below:

Click on the Page tab -> Edit -> Page Layout:

Then, select your page layout to apply in your publishing site as a page template.

It goes without saying that the benefits of using Visual Studio over SharePoint Designer to build your projects include features such as: reusable code, multiple deployment targets (development, testing, staging, and production environment), and more.

Hope this helps!

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Create, Configure, and Consume PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

cammach — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:00 GMT

PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010 is the next generation of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server, as well as a totally new feature added to SharePoint 2010 for enterprise deployment. PerformancePoint Services has one major mission in life, and that is to provide users with a more robust deployment, scalability, and performance model. It enables us to create rich, context-driven dashboards that aggregate data and content to provide a complete view of how your business is performing at all levels. As stated in a TechNet article, "By providing flexible, easy-to-use tools for building dashboards, scorecards, reports, and key performance indicators (KPIs), PerformancePoint Services can help everyone across an organization make informed business decisions that align with companywide objectives and strategies." Therefore, to effectively use PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010, it should be created and configured properly.

Challenge:

How do I create, configure, and consume PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010?

Solution:

I. Create PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

Go to the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage service applications (under the Service Applications section):

On the page listing of service applications, select the New button on the Ribbon, then PerformancePoint Services Application:

With the PerformancePoint Service Application form open, fill in the name of the service and either select an existing Application Pool or create a new one:

Click OK to finish creating PerformancePoint service.

II. Configure PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

1. Configure Secure Store Service

Another TechNet article explains that, "In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the Secure Store Service replaces the single sign-on (SSO) feature of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Secure Store Service is a claims-aware authorization service that includes a secure database for storing credentials." It is used to map users from a Target Application (e.g., Excel, Visio, PowerPivot, BCS, and PerformancePoint services) to a set of encrypted credentials stored in the secure database. These credentials are then used to authorize access to the external data source.

a. First, ensure the two services, Secure Store and PerformancePoint, are started.

Go to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage services on server (under the Service Applications section):

With the list of services open, start the two services if they had been stopped:

b. Generate a new encryption key for Secure Store Service

Before using the Secure Store Service, we must generate an encryption key. The key is used to encrypt and decrypt the credentials that are stored in the secure database.

Go to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage service applications (under the Service Applications section), then select your Secure Store Service:

With the service page opened, on the Ribbon bar, select the Generate New Key button:

With the Generate New Key form opened, enter your key:

c. Ensure that your Secure Store Service and PerformancePoint Services are default services in your Web Application.

Go to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Configure service application associations (under the Service Applications section):

Click on the default link on the Web Application that you are configuring for:

With the list of running services on the Configure Service Application Associations page opened, check and uncheck services you want to run as defaults on the Web Application:

2. Configure PerformancePoint Services to use Secure Store Service

Go to SharePoint 2010 Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage service applications (under the Service Applications section), and select your PerformancePoint Services:

With the service page open, select PerformancePoint Service Application Settings:

Enter your unattended service account and leave the other boxes as they are (you can change them when you need to):

Note: The unattended service account is an account that is used by the Target Application to provide broad database access to all users in the farm. It is used for accessing data that is not considered sensitive or where you do not want to restrict access to a certain group of users.

III. Consume PerformancePoint service

To use PerformancePoint Services, we must create a new Business Intelligence Center site.

Go to your root site collection, then Site Action -> New Site:

With the Site Template page opened, select the Business Intelligence Center site template:

Enter your site name and URL, then click Create to create a new Business Intelligence Center site.

Note: If you can't find the Business Intelligence Center site template, it means your PerformancePoint Services Site Collection Features has not yet been activated. Go to Site collections features at your root site level and activate the features.

Activate PerformancePoint Services Site Collection Features and SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure:

The Business Intelligence Center site will look like the image below:

Click on the Start using PerformancePoint Services link to start using the service.

Because using Dashboard Designer is outside the scope of this post, we aren't discussing it. To learn more about how to use Dashboard Designer, click on the Learn more online link. Then, in the dropdown list in the top row of the page, select PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer 2010 Help and How-to:

Here you can find articles that can help you to use Dashboard Designer to design a PerformancePoint Dashboard to show your organizational performance:

And that's the basics of PerformancePoint Services: how to create, configure, and consume it. I hope that you can found this post to be helpful.

SPC11: 'We're Going Two-way, Baby!' How Vancity Took its Intranet from Static to Social with SharePoint 2010

John Anderson — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Heather Harmse, Manager of the Employee Portal at the Vancouver-based Vancity Credit Union, presented a session Wednesday evening at the SharePoint Conference on deftly using the social features of SharePoint 2010 to drive adoption of the platform.

A financial institution with 56 branches, a staff numbering 2,500, and what used to be three separate, "well used but ... arthritic" intranets, it was Heather's responsibility to improve the employee intranet. The primary complaint about the existing intranets was poor discoverability, so key to the business case in the deployment of a new solution was findability. Additional goals intended to be achieved with the new platform included providing easy access to subject matter experts, breaking down silos and, naturally, consolidation of the three existing intranets into a single, unified portal experience.

Initially approved to deploy SharePoint 2007, Heather sought and ultimately received approval to deploy 2010, largely due to the social enhancements available in the then-new release. Heather's feeling that a "quality solution needs to be on the table before people will begin to perceive value" led to her decision to share (on the intranet blog) an early mockup of the new SharePoint portal homepage and a team site with Vancity staff. More than half of all Vancity employees went to the blog to check it out. In addition to presenting a quality solution, Heather stressed the importance of incorporating user feedback and identifying early adopters in the effort to help drive adoption.

To help improve findability, a "find-o-meter" widget was added to the old intranet search page, allowing employees to provide instant feedback with ratings and comments on the relative effectiveness of their search and the returned results. Heather explained that the widget kicked off an email that went to Heather's team, a member of which then emailed the commenter back, thanking them for their feedback, and letting them know how it would be used to help improve search. In this manner, Heather said that comments submitted via the find-o-meter informed and influenced the ultimate search solution and design, and it was such a success that it remains in place today on the SharePoint 2010 portal.

On SharePoint, a dashboard was set up to provide employees with easy access to the most commonly used sites and forms, and the available content is occasionally changed or updated via feedback received through the find-o-meter feedback. Similarly, aggregated pages dedicated to providing information applicable to specific topics, including necessary forms, tools, etc. were also presented to employees on the portal.

As subject matter experts are identified, they become content owners of related articles, and with comments available on their articles, easy access to the experts and their knowledge is available to all employees. With SharePoint 2010 as their solution, presence is incorporated as well, via integration with Communicator.

With screenshots, Heather then shared some examples of the use of social on SharePoint at Vancity. "My Sites are the cornerstone" she explained, saying that the entire executive management team was encouraged to (and did) populate their own My Sites at the outset of the release to lead by example. Heather showed that, in another successful effort to drive adoption, in addition to providing the expected corporate news, their portal homepage also includes such content as a (staff-submitted) "featured photo" of the month, a spotlight on employees with particularly rich My Sites, and a popular classifieds widget ("Vancity's Craigslist") which is only accessible via the portal homepage. Another successful effort to drive adoption involved using an out-of-the-box photo gallery to host a companywide employee photo contest, with prizes awarded to the winners.

Heather wrapped up her session by sharing some lessons learned, including: advance research pays off, and it's important to keep a finger on the findability pulse (accomplished via the find-o-meter in Vancity's case). In conclusion, Heather said that "Social can definitely yield significant business value around employee engagement, improving communications, and busting those silos." A final thought that she shared was that the all-at-once "big bang" isn't only launch approach, and that "We kept the backbone of the old intranet up while launching the new one, which helped soften the blow," as employees were able to go back and forth during the transition, and use one or the other.

Read our complete coverage of Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011.

SPC11: Rob Koplowitz Presents ‘The Forrester Survey: Best Practices in SharePoint 2010 Adoption and Migration’

John Anderson — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:39:00 GMT

Tuesday afternoon at the SPC, Rob Koplowitz, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, presented a session discussing the results of the Global SharePoint Usage Online Survey which was conducted in July. Invited to participate in the survey were Forrester clients, participants in previous SharePoint workshops, and Twitter users. Rob explained that Forrester had hoped for 100 respondents, but they shut it off just two days later, with over 500 respondents having already participated.

Rob said at the outset that "Success with SharePoint 2010 can be like defining the line between control and chaos but, ultimately, it's about functional need and organizational readiness." Getting straight to the survey data without further delay, Rob explained that SharePoint 2010 is gaining rapid adoption. While 65% of respondents were still using MOSS 2007, at 57%, over half were already on 2010. The option for application development was a big driver for respondents' speedy deployment of 2010, as was the strong desire to move in the direction of social that 2010 represents.

Survey findings revealed that SharePoint is popular across all company sizes. At 19%, the highest user base among respondents was companies between 1,000-4,999 employees, while 10% of respondents represented companies between 100-499 employees. At the extremes, 16% were companies with more than 100,000 employees, while 6% were companies with fewer than 100 employees.

Rob demonstrated that the "industry spread is also fairly even," with the surprise being that there were a number of industries very well represented which hadn't been anticipated. Among the industries represented by respondents were: financial services (21%), retail and wholesale (6%), government (9%), technology and telecom (19%), healthcare/pharmaceuticals (8%), and travel and tourism (2%).

Based on the survey results, the first best practice recommendation Rob shared was to "start with high value, low risk workloads." The survey revealed that not only were the benefits of collaboration, content management, and sites (portals and intranets) on SharePoint found to be the most useful to respondents, but they also provided the most satisfaction. As well, Rob stated that organizations "can roll these out with a great degree of confidence that it's going to work, and work as advertised."

Addressing the area of deployment pace and obstacles encountered, 41% of respondents said their deployment went slower than expected. Among that group, as expected, technical issues represented the largest percentage (at 59%) identified as being a barrier, and additional high-scoring results included: lack of governance slowed us (41%), functional issues with the product (36%), we can't find the skills/talent we need (28%), our users adopted more slowly (28%), and funding issues slowed us (25%).

Encouraging news for ISVs such as Bamboo, when asked, "Are you augmenting with third-party products?," while 43% of respondents said "no," over half (at 57%) of respondents said "yes." Furthermore, when asked if they had planned to use third-party products from the outset, 44% replied "yes." When asked how they were using third-party products, the highest percentage (at 8%) said they were using Nintex for workflow, and the next-highest placed company on the list was Bamboo with 6% of respondents identifying our Web Parts as being a part of their deployment. The next range of third-party provider usage that was shared was represented by four companies, including AvePoint, NewsGator, Axceler, and K2, all of whom were acknowledged as being used by 4% of respondents.

When asked if SharePoint was meeting IT's expectations, 79% of respondents said "yes," and 21% said "no." When asked if SharePoint was meeting business management's expectations, the numbers were very close to those of IT, with 27% saying "no," and 73% saying "yes." Rob noted that this represented a "very high level of satisfaction for both IT and business."

What about Office 365 and the cloud? 81% of respondents have SharePoint currently deployed on-premises, with 4% on BPOS, 3% on BPOS-D. A hybrid deployment of on-prem and cloud, or using hosting providers other than Microsoft representing the balance of respondents.

Rob said that "Only 17% said it was never a consideration" to deploy in the cloud. Of those respondents, 26% responded thusly due to requirements for security, privacy, compliance, or intellectual capital that precluded the option for them. Further questioning indicated, however, that most of the responding organizations that had responded in that manner were "simply incapable of assessing the viability of the cloud to meet those concerns."

Of the cloud experience, 28% of respondents said that their deployment to SharePoint Online was positive, and 13% said that it was harder than expected. Rob noted that the cloud and Office 365 is expected to become a "wholly more viable option with the next version of SharePoint."

In conclusion, Rob shared the Forrester-recommended best practices, or "your game plan to engage, innovate, and accelerate" as including the following:

In the short-term:

Assess SharePoint from a functional perspective;
Determine functional overlap with existing systems;
Develop a road map to deploy functionality based on need, risk, and readiness; and
Determine organizational readiness.

And in the longer term:

Deploy initial workloads and monitor;
Drive adoption, drive adoption, drive adoption; and
Expand to new workloads that may be riskier but offer significant new value.

Read our complete coverage of Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011.

SPC11: 'More Than My: How Microsoft is Driving Social Adoption and Intranet Transformation' with Internal Enhancements to OOTB SharePoint Social Features

John Anderson — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

This morning at the SPC, Microsoft Senior Solutions Manager Chris Slemp and Senior Program Manager Sean Squires presented a session demonstrating their efforts to drive social adoption at Microsoft by implementing enhancements to the out-of-the-box social features of SharePoint 2010 for the company's intranet.

Going "deeper" into some of what Dave Pae and Paul Javid had shown in their (immediately preceding) Improving Productivity with Social session, Sean explained that he and Chris would walk through the strategy they put together to comprehensively revamp the Microsoft intranet over the last year. Sean noted that theirs is a multi-year plan, and that they would discuss some of the aspirational goals as well. In essence, the goal is to rebrand My Sites as, simply, "My" (with a new look and feel) to "aggregate social activity as [you] engage across the enterprise."

Chris explained that Microsoft "employees demand a more modern intranet," in line with the consumerization of IT, "but how does that work in an enterprise environment?" Accordingly, their project vision is to "enable Microsoft employees to be more connected and productive by building a modern intranet while creating a showcase of Microsoft's technology."

Chris then showed an overview of screenshots for a series of internal SharePoint properties, while Sean discussed "modern" experiences, and "consumerized analogues" such as YouTube and Twitter. They both knew that they needed to provide enterprise equivalents of these compelling consumer products for the Microsoft intranet... and sure enough, "By providing these types of experiences ... we really start[ed] to see rapid adoption." Some of the "My" profile features include: a calendar snapshot, and more information surfaced directly that had previously resided behind tabs. A picker was demonstrated that allows users to filter feed content a la Twitter streams. There is also a Hot Topics feature, surfacing content based on the frequency of tags appearing in posts. Also, Recommendations are surfaced, based on the interests of the user. A "Send Kudos" feature in the Profile posts to the activity feed and sends email to that person's manager when "job well done" posts are shared.

A "Social Ribbon" (Like, Share, Comment, Print) was also demonstrated, as having been embedded in MSW (news site), and which is integrated with Activity Feeds and user profiles.

In response to a question regarding these nifty features being incorporated into SharePoint out-of-the-box, Chris responded saying that they consist of "a mix of out-of-the-box features that have been re-skinned, as well as some customizations," and allowed that "The SharePoint team is certainly looking at these features ... they're paying close attention, that's all I can say right now."

Chris then noted of their enhancements, "These things helped to increase discoverability." Demonstrating with his own "My" site, Chris showed that the Newsfeed includes internal and external RSS feeds inline. At this point, Sean chimed in to say that, "We're also tying this into the social tagging service [making for] a fantastic discovery point." Chris then demonstrated the Videos stream, which is served up automatically based on your interests. A microblogging newsfeed has been added to Infopedia, and "Using the concept of joining a community to say that I'm interested in this topic," tagging is applied, and served up via newsfeeds. Infopedia uses the same People Search service as on "My" to build a filterable people search.

Sean then used the internal ITWeb (help desk) to demonstrate the addition of the "My" microblogging solution (Office Talk is the name of the internal microblogging service) to a number of support services, noting that many support tickets can be closed much more quickly with the addition of the microblogging functionality. Sean also showed that the internal Academy site now taps in directly to the "My" profile page.

In conclusion, Chris explained that social and microblogging adoption challenges were overcome by: analytics that show the most commonly used hashtags on the system, the addition of a "Follow Suggestions" feature (that sends an email and drives traffic back to the site), a "Best of Office Talk" newsletter (which also drives traffic back to site), but said that it was integration with email and with My Sites (i.e., the tools all employees interacted with daily) that proved to be the biggest drivers of adoption.

Read our complete coverage of Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011.

SPC11: Paul Javid & Dave Pae on 'SharePoint 2010: Improving Productivity with Social'

John Anderson — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:45:00 GMT

This morning at the SPC, Microsoft Social Product Manager Paul Javid and Social Technical Product Manager Dave Pae presented a session on the topic of Improving Productivity with Social in SharePoint 2010. Paul said at the outset that "We've seen a proliferation of how we connect and how we share online" in the past 10 years, but there are "still a lot of unanswered questions." Segueing into a history of social computing, Paul pegged its beginning to social wikis and blogging platforms, which led to the understanding that "we're all publishers" (or can be if we so choose). Next up were LinkedIn and Facebook, allowing us to connect directly with friends and, shortly thereafter, we "started seeing different types of platforms emerge" which enabled users to share rich media, photos, and videos with friends (YouTube and Flickr). What Paul referred to as the "social Web" followed, with such sites as Twitter and Foursquare. Finally, Paul shared his (and, presumably, Microsoft's) belief that "where social is going [in the future] is around deeper connections."

Discussing enterprise social strategy, Paul said that with the consumerization of IT, enterprise/SharePoint "social is clearly influenced by consumer perception and consumer desire" in terms of the social tools we use in our personal lives. With 93,000+ "partner individuals, the fact that we have such a large ecosystem enables the future of SharePoint to grow as a social product." Paul then provided a brief history of social in SharePoint, from Microsoft Site Server through SharePoint 2010 and Lync 2010. Paul then said that now "we're hearing a lot about Office 365 [which] says 'here's where social is going' ... and we want to enable anyone to turn on this capability in just a couple clicks."

Paul explained that internally at Microsoft, socially "we've build the equivalent of a Wikipedia" called Infopedia, and it's "all about our concept of how we use community knowledge." FAST, in turn, "will help connect me to other people" based on search topics, while My Sites, integrated with Lync, enable instant, contextual contact. As well, the Activity Feed enables "people to be connected to each other as colleagues," and "Academy Mobile ... is our equivalent of YouTube for the enterprise."

Moving on to address "What's next, what's coming with Microsoft?," Paul said that "the market today looks at productivity and collaboration as separate issues," distinct from social computing, but "at Microsoft, we think they're the same [and] social, to us, is how we think about the future of productivity."

At this point, Dave began the demo portion of the session, beginning by showing a branded SharePoint portal, and editing the page to demonstrate the available editing and customization options, saying that "SharePoint allows you to build portal sites that impact your whole enterprise." Next, Dave showed a department level site, to bring people together and interact with team members (via the Note Board), and demonstrating the presence technology which makes contact information and options immediately available. Using Lync 2010, Dave demonstrated an IM with Paul, including a very cool new feature, Translator, which converted Dave's typed English into Spanish ("Viewing English, sending Spanish" appeared at the top of the IM window). During the IM conversation, Dave shared a document so they could walk through it together, and said that the entire exchange could be recorded and saved as a video file to SharePoint when complete.

Demonstrating collaboration on a Word doc, Dave showed the co-authoring feature which allows multiple authors to edit a single document at the same time, including built-in version management. Through the My Site, Dave showed that you can visit a colleagues' personal site, featuring embedded contact info and the ability to IM and initiate a VOIP call via Lync, as well as featuring an Activity Feed, Org Chart, and more. Within a user's Profile site, Dave also showed the Content and Tags and Notes tabs, status updates (surfaced in the Activity Feed for others to see), and summed up by saying that "My Site is a great way to store information and have it shared centrally."

Concluding his demo, Dave showed a branded SharePoint blog which had been made to "look like a modern consumer blog page" using CSS. Dave then added a picture to a post, editing/resizing, and publishing. Saying that it's also important to be able to find this information, Dave wrapped up with a quick demo of FAST search, including integrated inline preview of search results, business card integration, and search refiners.

Paul concluded the session by showing some screenshots of branded SharePoint 2010 customer social sites, including the intranet sites of Accenture, Telus, and EA to demonstrate what's possible with branding. Referencing a recent Gartner survey of social in the workplace which placed Microsoft in the leader quadrant, Paul ended the session proper by observing that social "integration across our entire productivity suite [at Microsoft] aligns nicely with how analysts are thinking as well."

Read our complete coverage of Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011.

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: SharePoint 2010 Excel Services - An Error Has Occurred

Duy Do — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMT

SharePoint 2010 offers a wide variety of features that make our work lives easier, but every now and again, SharePoint can still be less than kind to users.

Challenge:

When I was trying to open an Excel 2007 spreadsheet once, this error came up unexpectedly:

And then:

Which was followed by:

Hmm. So I started investigating to determine the source of the problem, gathered all of the solutions I found to be potentially relevant, and was finally able to get my Excel Service up and running. If you are experiencing any of the above errors, hopefully the information below will help you to find the solution to your own problem.

Solution:

Possible Causes:

The SharePoint 2010 Excel Services Application has not started properly.
The Security Token Service Application is not started properly.
The Excel Service account does not have permissions for the SharePoint content database.

Resolutions Checklist:

Step 1: Go to Central Administration -> Application Management -> Manage service applications -> Verify that the Excel Services Application and Security Token Service Application have started.

Step 2: Go to Central Administration -> System Settings -> Manage services on server -> Verify that Excel Calculation Services has started.

Step 3: Go to Central Administration -> Security -> Configure service accounts -> select Service Application Pool - SharePoint Web Services Default if you are using out-of-the-box SharePoint Excel Service; if you have created a new application pool for your Excel Service, select it instead. Note the service account currently being used.

Step 4: Verify that your service account includes the db_owner role in the SharePoint content database of that Web application. You can do this in SQL Management Studio on your SQL Server, or by using the following PowerShell commands to grant permission to your service account:

On the SharePoint Server, click Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products -> SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
Enter these commands:

$w = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity http://portal

$w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\serviceaccount")

Step 5: Provision the Excel Services Application by running these PowerShell commands:

$excel = Get-SPExcelServiceApplication

$excel.Provision()

Step 6: Open IIS Manager on the SharePoint Server, and verify that SecurityTokenServiceApplicationPool has started.

Step 7: Reset IIS

Notes:

This blog post only applies to SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise.
This blog post was written with basically the out-of-the-box SharePoint Excel Services Application in mind, and may not cover problems arising from customizing Excel Service.

SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Add a web.config Modification Using PowerShell

Challenge:

Solution:

Discussion:

References:

How to Reply Directly to a Discussion from the SharePoint 2010 Display Form

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Remove a web.config Modification Using PowerShell

Challenge:

Solutions:

Discussion:

See Also:

Direct Reply to a Discussion in a SharePoint 2010 Display Form Using SharePoint Designer 2010

How to Create a SharePoint 2010 Project Without SharePoint Server

How to Fix "The webpage cannot be found" in SharePoint 2010 My Sites

Using Common DLLs in Sandboxed Solutions

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Fix 'Unable to display this Web Part' when Working with External Lists in SharePoint 2010

Challenge:

Solution:

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Create a Custom Page Layout for Publishing Sites Using Visual Studio 2010

Challenge:

Solution:

See Also:

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: How to Create, Configure, and Consume PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

Challenge:

Solution:

I. Create PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

II. Configure PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint 2010

2. Configure PerformancePoint Services to use Secure Store Service

III. Consume PerformancePoint service

See Also:

SPC11: 'We're Going Two-way, Baby!' How Vancity Took its Intranet from Static to Social with SharePoint 2010

SPC11: Rob Koplowitz Presents ‘The Forrester Survey: Best Practices in SharePoint 2010 Adoption and Migration’

SPC11: 'More Than My: How Microsoft is Driving Social Adoption and Intranet Transformation' with Internal Enhancements to OOTB SharePoint Social Features

SPC11: Paul Javid & Dave Pae on 'SharePoint 2010: Improving Productivity with Social'

SharePoint 2010 Cookbook: SharePoint 2010 Excel Services - An Error Has Occurred

Challenge:

Solution:

Possible Causes:

Resolutions Checklist:

Notes:

See also: