Mart Muller_s Sharepoint Weblog

Guidance and tools to enable IT Pros to upgrade custom Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 sites and templates to function in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environments.

The Toolkit serves three main purposes:

• To provide IT professionals with the guidance and tools they need to upgrade customized Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 sites and site templates to function in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment.
• To provide a set of upgraded application templates for Windows SharePoint Services based on those currently published for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 on TechNet.
• To provide instructions for installing these application templates in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment.

The 60 page guide covers the following topics:

• Ch 1: Introduction. Introduces the Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services Sites and Templates, explaining its purpose, scope, audience, and contents.
• Ch 2: Planning Your Template Upgrade. Examines the site and site template upgrade process from beginning to end and gives you necessary information for planning your upgrade strategy. It explains that the upgrade process has two stages: one to perform before your Windows SharePoint Services environment is upgraded to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and one to perform after the upgrade.
• Ch 3: Preparing a Site Template Based on a Customized Site Definition. If you determine, based on Chapter 2, that one or more of your site templates are based on customized site definitions, this chapter will familiarize you with upgrade definition files and new site definitions.
• Ch 4: Stage 1: Before Upgrading to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Describes the Stage 1 site template upgrade steps that you must perform before starting the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 upgrade.
• Ch 5: Stage 2: After Upgrading to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Describes the Stage 2 site template upgrade steps that you must perform after finishing the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 upgrade.
• Ch 6: The Upgraded Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services. Lists and describes the function of each of the upgraded application templates for Windows SharePoint Services and gives you detailed instructions for installing the application templates in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment.
• Ch 7: Troubleshooting. Provides workarounds and fixes for problems you may encounter.
• Appendix: Glossary. Lists the relevant terms used in this solution accelerator.

Also included in this toolkit are:

• A set of command scripts to streamline some of the server tasks during the site and template upgrade
• A set of upgraded application templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. To get these templates, click here.

To view this solution online at TechNet, click here.

 

Download here

First of all, happy new year! 2006 has been an exciting year, expecially for office/sharepoint people. A lot of beta stuff and new things to dive into. 2007 will probably be even better, looking at all the Office 2007 opportunities to come!

Anyway, a good start with a tip from Eli, talking about authenticating when opening documents in an extranet, and expecially, how to avoid it.

"The solution is found in Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) 2006. If you"re making SharePoint available externally you should already be running ISA. The trick is configuring the Listener of that external connector to allow persistent cookies. Go to Listener Properties, Forms, Advanced. Name your cookie and select "Only on Private Computers" for the second field.

It"s also good to configure ISA to use Forms-based NTLM authentication, which even has extensions to supoprt third-party authentication providers like RSA. That way you can use most any browser to hit your external SharePoint site, not just IE and Firefox. "

Read the complete article

Today I ran into a blog post from Tony Bierman, talking about one of the new surprises of WSS3: SPWebConfigModification object. This object is an interface for changeing the web.config file(s) on all SharePoint servers in the server farm. So, in case you have missed it:

"At some point in your career as a SharePoint developer you may find it necessary to push out a change to a SharePoint web application"s web.config file for all servers in the farm.  In the simplest of scenarios, it may be realistic to make the change to web.config manually, but if you are creating a packaged application for redistribution or there are many servers in the SharePoint farm, a better approach might be to make the web.config modifications programmatically.  The WSS v3 API contains the SPWebConfigModification object which allows you to do just that."

 

using System;

using System.Globalization;

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;



public class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

AddAjaxHandlerToWebConfig("Default Web Site");

}



/// <summary>

/// Adds the Ajax HttpHandler to a web application"s web.config for all servers in
the farm 


/// </summary>

/// <param name="webAppName">Name of web application</param>

private static void AddAjaxHandlerToWebConfig(string webAppName)

{

string assmDetails =

string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, 


"Microsoft.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, Microsoft.Web.Extensions, Version={0},
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken={1}", 


new object[] { "1.0.61025.0", "31bf3856ad364e35" });



SPWebConfigModification modification =

new SPWebConfigModification("add[@name="AjaxHttpHandler"]", "configuration/system.web/httpHandlers");

modification.Owner = "Ajax";

modification.Sequence = 0;

modification.Type = SPWebConfigModification.SPWebConfigModificationType.EnsureChildNode;

modification.Value =

string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, 


"<add verb=\"{0}\" path=\"{1}\" type=\"{2}\" validate=\"{3}\"/>", 


new object[] { "GET", "ScriptResource.axd", assmDetails, "false" });



SPWebApplication webApp = SPWebService.ContentService.WebApplications[webAppName];



if (webApp != null)

{

webApp.WebConfigModifications.Add(modification);

SPFarm.Local.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>().ApplyWebConfigModifications();

}

}

}

Read the complete article

This is the next version of the SharePoint Query Tool, designed for MOSS (SharePoint 2007). It has a similar feature set to the SharePoint Query Tool - it allows you to use a point and click interface to gather information such as search scopes and properties, type in search terms, and click a button to create both the search SQL syntax as well as the Xml document that is needed to run a query against MOSS. You can see results in plain text, structured Xml and now a dataset view. It supports FREETEXT and CONTAINS as well as wildcard searching. A very valuable tool for those trying to write custom SharePoint queries.

Download here

Via Jopx

This white paper explores how the 2007 Microsoft Office system allows enterprises to adopt Web 2.0 ideas and technologies to create high-value, user-driven applications for the Internet and intranet.

Download here

The Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Management Pack monitors events placed in the application event log. This Management Pack highlights events that might indicate possible service outages or configuration problems, so you can quickly take corrective or preventive actions. This Management Pack also provides the knowledge and expertise you need to leverage Microsoft Operations Manger (MOM) 2005 and get an immediate return on your investment.

Feature Summary:
• Monitors whether the application pool account has insufficient permission to add or read users from the Active Directory
• Monitors for issues arising from improper configuration of the authentication provider
• Monitors backup failures and recycle bin quotas
• Monitors for connectivity problems with computers running SQL server
• Monitors for issues arising from the deployment and topology of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Monitors events related to the health of the tracing infrastructure
• Monitors connectivity with the SMTP server
• Monitors whether the application pool account has problems writing to disk or a registry key
• Monitors connectivity with Windows Rights Management Services servers
• Monitors performance counters
• Monitors events that are critical to the sound operation of the search service
• Monitors Windows service availability
• Monitors events associated with the Timer service
• Monitors events associated with failures to load event handlers and safe control assembly paths

Download here

Slated for general availability in mid-2007, Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a highly integrated performance management application, driven by the SQL Server platform and familiar Microsoft Office front end, allowing corporations to monitor, analyze, plan and make critical business decisions based on reliable data from all aspects of the company. Partners, customers and end-users are encouraged to visit the Web site to download the application to begin building plans in a real-world environment and testing the overall power of the product for themselves.

Read the complete article here

Via Jan:

Finally the latest version of the SmartPart is here: the Return of the SmartPart, also know as SmartPart v3, also know as SmartPart for SharePoint 2007. For those of you who are new to the SmartPart: the SmartPart is an open source web part that can host any ASP.NET Web User Control. What is the advantage of creating web parts by making use of the SmartPart? Well if you are familiar with the "traditional" web part development technique you probably know that you have to write lots of code, there is no designer support in Visual Studio. The SmartPart allows you to create a Web User Control (ASCX) in Visual Studio by making use of the designer, and deploy it to a SharePoint site. This release of the SmartPart is targetted for SharePoint 2007, both Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSSv3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Since the initial release almost 40.000 SharePoint developers have downloaded the SmartPart, get your copy today (for free of course) from the GotDotNet Workspace (in the releases section)! For those of you who have attended my session about web part development on TechEd: Developers in Barcelona, this is the version that I showed over there.

For more information about the deployment of the Return of the Smartpart, check out this post which also has a link to a small screencast. Keep an eye on my blog or www.smartpart.info for more information, examples and screencast about creating web parts the smart way!

Full article

Angus Logan refers to Ishai"s blog where the SharePoint Tips ustility Pack is available for download. Some interesting applications for easy development, like quickly change list settings, push webparts and recursively delete sites.

Use at your own risk..

Download here

Great work from S.S. Ahmed. WSUploadService is a web service for uploading documents in SharePoint 2007 environments.

"WS UploadService is a web service written for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and is meant for uploading documents into SharePoint. I have just uploaded the zip file to GotDotNet.com so it will take some time before the zip file appears in the list of downloads. For the time being, you can download the zip file from the following location:"

http://www.walisystems.com/ws1_dlc.asp (Download Size: 361 KB)

See Ahmeds post for full details and code examples.