Cool tool! Disk2vhd

 

A few weeks ago my laptop had to go back for service.  I needed to back it up, but I also needed to keep working with everything installed on that laptop. Windows Sysinternals to the rescue. A tool named Disk2vhd does just what it’s name implies, it copies a disk to a VHD. Not only that, but it copies a live, in use, disk to a VHD.  I downloaded Disk2vhd, fired it up and copied my laptop’s drive C: to a VHD on my server. I made a 2nd copy on the server as a backup, then opened the VHD in Hyper-V. I had a running clone of my laptop!  I was able to continue working, minus portability, on my “laptop” while it was physically away being repaired.

Pretty cool!

 

Download it here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

 

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Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Meeting

 

First Thursday of every month!  Next meeting is this week: 10/7/10

 

Click here for info about this month’s meeting: http://www.CincinnatiSPUG.org

We have door prizes!  In addition to free pizza, we usually have a number of SharePoint books, mice, Windows 7 Ultimate and other goodies to give away!

See you there!

 

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SharePoint 2010: Playing with the Multilingual User Interface with JavaScript

 

I was doing some testing with the new SharePoint 2010 “multilingual user interface” (MUI) feature. If you have not seen this yet, Google/Bing it. In playing with this I got to thinking that no typical user would ever discover it. I can just see SharePoint sites everywhere with a block of text on every home page with instructions: “How to change the language settings…”. So after we get past some background on MUI, I’ll show what I’ve been playing with for user interfaces.

 

In case you have not, here’s some quick background.

• You must have language packs installed for each language
• There is no user language detection– a user must pick the language
• User created text (list and library content) is not multilingual
• Help files and administration pages are multilingual
• Site title, Quick Launch and Tab text can be entered in each language
• Managed metadata supports multiple languages
• Text can be exported for translation and then imported
• Search indexes sites in the default language of the SharePoint installation – the other languages are ignored
• Web Part titles and descriptions do not change in the user interface, unless a Web Part is a list-based Web Part
• Here’s a good place to start: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff805062.aspx

Here’s a site that was created in English, but has French enabled:

Here’s the same site after the user has selected French.

The site title has not changed, but can! Just edit it while in “French mode” and you will then have a title for each language.

Notice the page content and any content typed into lists and libraries has not changed.

 

Steps to get things setup:

1. Install the language packs on your web servers (Each language needs to downloaded and installed separately).
2. Turn on support for multiple languages: Site Actions, Site Settings, Language Settings (Must be done for each site!)
3. Test by going to the Welcome menu (the “your name” dropdown at the top right of the page) and clicking Select Display Language.

 

And there’s the problem!

 

As you can see in the screen above, the user has to “discover” that language options in the Welcome menu. How many new SharePoint users do you know that will ever click on their name at the top of the page?

Turns out the mechanism for language selection is quite simple. The link above just calls a JavaScript function that stores a cookie and then reloads the page.  You can do your own language selection either by creating your own cookie (not the best idea) or calling SharePoint’s built-in function.

To select French just call:

    OnSelectionChange(1036)

The number, 1036, is Microsoft’s “Locale Id” for “French-France”.  For a list of these IDs see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff805062.aspx 

Note that these numbers only meaningful if you have the appropriate language packs installed.

If you want to see how they set the cookie, view the source of the the page and search for “function OnSelectionChagne”.

 

Adding your own buttons and links…

Any place where you can add HTML you can add buttons to select a language. These include the Content Editor Web Part, SharePoint Designer and else where.

For example:

<button onclick="OnSelectionChange(1036)"> French </button>
<button onclick="OnSelectionChange(1033)"> English </button>

 

Adding to Quick Launch and Top Link Bar

Yes, you can add JavaScript to Quick Launch and the Top Link Bar, except for Publishing Sites that is. For more info see here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2010/10/sharepoint-javascript-in-quick-launch.html

 

 

All you need to do is add the “JavaScript: OnSelectionChange(1036)” as the hyperlink!

 

 

 

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SharePoint: JavaScript in Quick Launch and Top Link Bar!

 

Update: SharePoint 2010 users can use these same techniques to display a page in a SharePoint dialog box. See here: http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2010/12/sharepoint-opening-2010-dialog-box-from.html

 

Pretty scary! After five years of working with SharePoint 2007 I’m still finding new tricks! (Yes, 12,000 people probably have already found this… but I just did!)

 

Did you know….

                                      you can put JavaScript in Quick Launch and Top Link Bar links?

 

Should have been obvious (hit’s self in head).  Where you can have “http://” you can generally have “JavaScript:”.

Example:

            <A HREF=”http://www.maxtrain.com”>  Click here </A>

            <A HREF=”JavaScript:alert(‘hi there!’)”>  Click here </A>

 

Before you go on… this works in SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, in both Quick Launch and Top Link Bar, but only in non-publishing based sites. (see the end of this article)

 

 

JavaScript in Quick Launch!

For a quick test… go to Site Actions, Site Settings, Quick Launch and add this bit of JavaScript in the URL box:

JavaScript:alert('Hello world!')

(Note: Although “JavaScript” can also be “javascript”, most everything in JavaScript must be in the correct case. You must type “alert” in all lower case.)

 

Now test it:

 

 

Now what can you do with this?

 

My head overflows with ideas!  Here’s three to start with:

• Prompt a user before going to a page or site (“Are you sure you …”)
• Open a link from Quick Launch or the Tabs in a new window
• Change page languages (in SP 2010)    see here

 

Prompt user before going to a link:

 

Here’s the normal link found in Quick Launch for the Calendar: 
         “/sites/training/secure/Lists/Calendar/calendar.aspx”

 

Here’s a link that will prompt to see if you really want to go to the calendar: (all one line!)

JavaScript:if (confirm('do you really want to see the calendar?'))
document.location='/sites/training/secure/Lists/Calendar/calendar.aspx';

 

 

 

Here’s a more practical link that will prompt to see if you really want to go to an external site: (all one line!)

JavaScript: if ( confirm('This web site is external to the 
company and may not be safe!') ) 
document.location='http://www.google.com';

 

Open a link from Quick Launch or the Tabs in a new window

 

javascript: void(window.open('http://www.google.com'));

This example is in SharePoint 2010:

 

 

Where does it not work?  Publishing sites!

 

While this trick works from Team Sites and other non-publishing sites, it does not work form an site with the Publishing features enabled. (How do you know? Go to Site Actions, Site Settings, and see if you have “Quick Launch” or “Navigation”.  “Navigation” is for publishing sites.

The problem is the editor popup. It’s checking for things like “http://” and “mailto:” and not accepting “JavaScript”.

 

 

 

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SharePoint 2010: Disabling “I Like It” and “Tags & Notes”

 

In my SharePoint governance classes I often say that you should not release a SharePoint feature until you have a plan for it…

• is governance required (is there a risk through misuse)?
• who will support it”
• how will you train users?
• what’s the impact on performance?

So what about:

   

 

In SharePoint 2010 this topic often comes up around the new social features, including “I Like It” and “Tags & Notes”. So until you have a “plan”, how can you disable these features?

 

Hide the Ribbon Links

One step might be to disable the “I Like It” and “Tags & Notes” in the ribbon. Just keep in mind that this is done at the farm level, so you will be removing it for everyone. This part of the ribbon is implemented as a feature named “Social Tags and Note Board Ribbon Controls”, so all you need to do is disable the feature from Central Administration or by using PowerShell. See the following TechNet article for details:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721062.aspx

 

Disable the feature for selected users and groups

A better option might be to disable “I Like It” and “Tags & Notes” for selected users by changing a permission. I had expected to find this “permission” in the list of user and group permissions, but this one is part of Profile Services.

Here’s the TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721064.aspx

 

Central Administration

–> Application Management section

    –> Manage service applications

      –> User Profile Service Application link.

         –> in the People section, click Manage User Permissions.

 

 

Note system administrators will still see the “I Like It” and “Tags & Notes”. Users, Site Owners and  Site Collection Administrators will not, unless granted access in Profile Services.

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SharePoint and ASP.NET Vulnerability – Security Update Available

 

Note that this is not just limited to SharePoint. It impacts anything running ASP.NET except for 1.1 SP3.

 

UPDATE!

Out of Band Release to Address Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/09/28/out-of-band-release-to-address-microsoft-security-advisory-2416728.aspx

 

This security update is rated Important for all supported editions of ASP.NET except Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 3.

See here for versions and details: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS10-070.mspx

 

 

SharePoint developers and server administrators need to follow up on this Microsoft Security Advisory.

Read this ASAP!

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/18/important-asp-net-security-vulnerability.aspx

and this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/09/21/security-advisory-2416728-vulnerability-in-asp-net-and-sharepoint.aspx

 

“This vulnerability affects Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.  The vulnerability is in ASP.NET. We recommend that all SharePoint 2010 customers apply the workaround as soon as possible”

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Updated URL for SharePoint Live Chats with the MVPs!

 

Updated URL for the chat: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/aa497438.aspx

then look for Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts

 

 

Wednesday Sept 29th at 9am PDT or noon EST

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

Live Chats to Learn more about SharePoint with the MVP Experts

Do you have questions about SharePoint? Want to learn more about the recently launched SharePoint 2010?  By popular request, SharePoint MVPs from around the world are participating in a live chat event about SharePoint. These Q&A events are a great opportunity to tap into the vast knowledge of these industry professionals who are regarded as the best in their field.

Please join us on Wednesday Sept 29th at 9am PDT or noon EST.  Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

Twitter hastag:  #spmvpchat

Facebook Event:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=151942471504808

MVP Team Blog post:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2010/09/20/september-live-chats-to-learn-more-about-sharepoint-with-the-mvp-experts.aspx

 

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SharePoint Live Chats with the MVPs!

 

 

Updated URL for the chat: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/aa497438.aspx

then look for Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts

 

 

Wednesday Sept 29th at 9am PDT or noon EST

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

Live Chats to Learn more about SharePoint with the MVP Experts

Do you have questions about SharePoint? Want to learn more about the recently launched SharePoint 2010?  By popular request, SharePoint MVPs from around the world are participating in a live chat event about SharePoint. These Q&A events are a great opportunity to tap into the vast knowledge of these industry professionals who are regarded as the best in their field.

Please join us on Wednesday Sept 29th at 9am PDT or noon EST.  Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

Twitter hastag:  #spmvpchat

Facebook Event:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=151942471504808

MVP Team Blog post:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2010/09/20/september-live-chats-to-learn-more-about-sharepoint-with-the-mvp-experts.aspx

 

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SharePoint and ASP.NET Vulnerability

 

UPDATE!

Out of Band Release to Address Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/09/28/out-of-band-release-to-address-microsoft-security-advisory-2416728.aspx

 

SharePoint developers and server administrators need to follow up on this Microsoft Security Advisory.

Read this ASAP!

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/18/important-asp-net-security-vulnerability.aspx

and this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/09/21/security-advisory-2416728-vulnerability-in-asp-net-and-sharepoint.aspx

 

“This vulnerability affects Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010.  The vulnerability is in ASP.NET. We recommend that all SharePoint 2010 customers apply the workaround as soon as possible”

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SharePoint SPAM?

 

I have been receiving a lot of SPAM from companies that I think are legit vendors of quality SharePoint products. These all come from something called “icontact.com”.  As “icontact.com” appears not to honor their own unsubscribe page I have added “icontact.com” to my spam filters.

So if you are a big time SharePoint vendor using “icontact.com” that wants to reach me, you may want to find some other route.

 

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM… I hate SPAM!