SharePoint Blogs

When using InfoPath forms as Content Types you're bound to run into the error "Content Type is still in use", when trying to remove an existing InfoPath as a Content Type.

From my experience you will not be able to remove any InfoPath form Content Type from a Form Library that has submitted InfoPath forms based off that Content Type.  If the library is using multiple InfoPath form Content Types you can go into the Form Library Settings page and update a property for it not to show.  From the settings page locate the "Content Types" section and then click the "Change new button order and default content type" link.

From the "Change New Button Order and Default Content Type" page uncheck the "Visible" check box for he form you no longer want appearing on the Form Library "New" button.

If this InfoPath form is the only Content Type for the Form Library then you can go and edit the Form Library security and not allow any new forms to be added.  The Form Library security link "Permissions for this form library" is located on the Form Library Settings page under the "Permissions and Management" section.

Earlier this year, I also discovered that you can remove the "New" button from the Form Library toolbar by blanking out the library form "Template URL". This property is located on the "Advance settings" page and is only available when "Allow management of content types?" property is set to "No".  I'm not sure why you're allowed to do this but I thought I would share it because it was something interesting.

Cheers

 

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Posted on SharePoint Blogs

If you maintain a blog that is at least minimally connected to SharePoint, please let me know in comments. I would love to add you to my blog list . If you maintain a blog that is not connected to SharePoint but want me to add it anyway, let me know. Read More......(read more)

Body: Today I'm flying back to Australia, going to be there for an entire month, I really cant wait. Point2Share is going to be slow, but will be some exciting things to announce when I get back! See you then. Category: General Published: 14/10/2007 Read More......(read more)

As I posted earlier I was attending and speaking at the South Carolina Code Camp this weekend and I'm proud to say that the code camp was a great success, at least I thought so.  I was able to meet a bunch of new people and some old friends.  It was a great time.

On a personal note the 2 sessions that I did on InfoPath, InfoPath Forms Services and .NET went better than expected from the speaking standpoint but had technical problems with my VPC image and Vista but I was able to overcome the hurdles.  Having this opportunity to speak exceed all my expectations and hope to have another chance in the near future.  I would like to give Murray Gordon a special thank you for giving me this chance.

Cheers

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Posted on SharePoint Blogs

Body: The CKS team and Zac has been working to get the forms authentication component of CKS Intranet and Extranet edition released. The Pre-Beta release is now available on CodePlex. Go and check out the new features. User Login Membership Request and Read More......(read more)

When you install the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (VSeWSS), you get a neat little tool called the SharePoint solution generator. You can point this tool at any existing sharepoint site and it will produce a Visual Read More......(read more)

There was a post in the newsgroups wondering how when constructing a custom field type how one might build a small generic validation function in order to verify the harvested user input. There is provided the SPField.GetValidatedString method, which Read More......(read more)

It's been a while since I last blogged - with the work I am doing at the moment I haven't had time!

I have been given the task of creating new site definitions complete with branding and functionality. I'm still waiting to go on my SharePoint Designer course but having played with my virtual environment for the past month I have picked up quite a bit

So far I have created a new site definition based on STS unde SiteTemplates, I have managed to create new preview images and got a new tab to appear on the New SharePoint Site page. I was quite pleased with myself when it all worked. Then I applied a custom master page to the new site definition by changing ONET.XML in my new site definition's XML directory. Following that I started playing around adding new Web Part Zones and seeing how everything linked together. ONET.XML defines the initial content that is displayed in the default.aspx page of your new site.

I've also modified custom.master so that additional options are available in the top right hand corner navigation bar. So far it all works

What's next? Well, I need to create site definitions for wikis, blogs etc all by the end of next week!

One thing I haven't worked out how to do is apply my own custom css file - I had problems when I tried to apply an alternate css file through the SharePoint Site Settings pages. There has to be a better way of applying your own CSS file so that it is applied after CORE.CSS, maybe someone will work it out.

One little quirk I did notice was that if I created a site using my new site definition and custom master page and then tried to edit the site in SharePoint Designer, the custom.master file that appeared in the mastercatalogs directory was different to my site definition's custom.master file - wierd! I'll have to come back to that one.

I am documenting everything I am doing, including the quirks, and I'll post the document here in a future blog once I have made sure it all works ok.

It's been handy having the virtual environment to work with. I keep a backup of the VHD file (10Gb!) and can restore if I foul up (which I quite often do!). I would recommend virtualisation for anyone who has the kit that is able to take the strain. 2Gb of RAM seems to be the minimum workable. I tried it on a 1.5Gb laptop and it struggled. Not nearly as slow as my original setup of 1Gb though!

I've just signed up to the SharePoint User Group UK site as it could be quite handy building up a network of fellow SharePoint misfits

One of the other things I have been tasked with is to create an online help centre for our users. I have created a SharePoint 2007 wiki site for this and set up a series of pages with detailed help on blogs, wikis etc. I then found the Customizable Everyday Productivity Education (EPE) content developed by Microsoft IT for end user training page which has some useful stuff on there for end users, so I may be cribbing bits from it.

You've also probably already found this but Help for SharePoint 2007 from Microsoft is quite good too.

Anyway, next week should be interesting as I try and get all of the site definitions finished. I'll let you know how I get on.

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Posted on SharePoint Blogs

Body: OK, so you know you can configure Windows Explorer to restore all its open windows at their current location if you reboot your system. That's great. We all use that feature. Pity it doesn't do it for Internet Explorer… OK, so I just LOVE Read More......(read more)

Body: When using FBA, session timeout is determined in the web.config. This is a standard feature of asp.net. Example: <forms loginUrl="/_layouts/login.aspx" timeout="30" /> (timeout is in minutes). Setting the timeout in Central Read More......(read more)