2/05/2011

SharePoint Cincy – Major SharePoint Event Coming to Cincinnati!

About time!

We now have our own local event!

Northern Kentucky University’s Center for Applied Informatics and MAX Technical Training are bringing a major SharePoint event to the Cincinnati area! SharePoint Cincy will be held at the METS Center located in Erlanger, KY. The METS center is near the Cincinnati airport (CVG) and has lots of free parking.

See the site for the agenda, speakers and registration: http://www.sharepointcincy.com

Are you, or do you know a SharePoint “guru”?

Are you a SharePoint guru who would like to speak at SharePoint Cincy? Click here and summit a proposal. Do you have a recommendation for a speaker or a topic? Then click here and tell us about it!

1/31/2011

SharePoint 2010 Internet Site Upgrade Watch Out!

I was just updating the list of regional SharePoint User Groups on the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group web site. I did a web search for each group, and then clicked the link…

Many of the user group web sites looked to be inactive!

But most likely they had updated from a SharePoint 2007 Team Site to SharePoint 2010 Team Site.

SharePoint 2010 Team Sites have two home pages!

In SharePoint 2007 Team Sites had a single home page named default.aspx. In 2010 Team Sites have a new home page named Home.aspx that is stored in the SitePages library. But… there is still a default.aspx page in the root of the site.

If you started out with a 2007 site then the search engines indexed your site as http://yourURL/default.aspx. The same is true for most people who bookmarked your site or linked to it from their site or blog. When you upgraded to 2010 your new home page is http://yourURL/sitepages/home.aspx, but most of the links pointing to your site point to /default.aspx.

Fix it

There are a number of ways to fix this…

Add a message to the default.aspx file (using a Content Editor Web Part) that the URL has changed, and please update your links.
Add some JavaScript to the default.aspx file (using a Content Editor Web Part or SharePoint Designer) that auto redirects to the new home page.

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Meeting

Next meeting: Thursday February 3, 2011 6:30 PM

February's Presentation

Topic: Building an Optimized Internet Business Solution with SharePoint 2010

Abstract: This one hour presentation will cover Microsoft’s Digital Marketing Platform Strategy around: Web Content Management, Social and Web 2.0, Analytics, Commerce, Search and Digital Assets. Using the SharePoint Platform to deliver an adaptive web experience for end-users is a key area of investment for Microsoft to align with the trends in the market and solutions being deployed in various industries.

Presenter: Michele Fiola is a Digital Marketing Platform Specialist with Microsoft, based out of Cleveland. She has been with Microsoft for 6 years as a Solution Specialist focusing on business productivity applications, such as Office and SharePoint. Michele’s 20 year career in the software industry also includes ERP and Plant Floor Automation expertise

Please email point2share@gmail.com for any questions

Meeting agenda

Date:         February 3, 2011, Thursday
Time:         6:00 – 8:00 pm.
Where:       Max Technical Training, 4900 Parkway Dr. #160 Mason, OH.
                  Click on the link for directions http://www.maxtrain.com/directions/
Schedule:
6:00 – 6:25 - Socials and Networking - No Registration required
6:25 – 6:30 - Introduction of Agenda and Speakers
6:30 – 8:00 – Presentation

1/29/2011

SharePoint: Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed - Excel 2010 Excel Import problems

Updated… New version of Office, same old problem! If you get the IOWSPostData error while trying to import an Excel range into SharePoint, then you need to patch an Excel macro file. The same fix for Office 2007 will also work for Office 2010.

Click here for the updated article…

1/22/2011

Book Update

Update! The book’s done!

See here for the update and here for more about the book.

I made a big mistake during my presentation at the Columbus SharePoint Saturday… I mentioned that I was working on a book and that it would soon be available. What was that about “the best-laid plans of mice and men?” As an instructor I get to teach up to forty hours a week, and each classroom hour requires three to eight hours of prep time. Over the last few months I’ve had a heavy class load and little free time for the book. (I keep letting work get in the way of hobbies and book writing!)

Several people have been pestering me about “is it out yet?” So let me tell a little about the book and maybe why it’s taking longer than expected.

SharePoint® 2007 and 2010 Customization for the Site Owner

by Michael T. Smith

There are a lot of books for SharePoint administrators and SharePoint developers, and even a few for SharePoint end users. But there is not much available for the site owner, especially on quick and easy site customization. Over the last five years I have probably trained at nearly a thousand site owners and written a lot blog articles with tips and tricks for site owners. Most of the blog articles were from site owner questions during or after class that really made me think about how to solve the problem without writing custom code. Most of these articles have been fairly short and to the point: add this web part, copy and paste this JavaScript or CSS. Each time I have written one of these blog articles I have wished I had the time to expand the article to explain more about the how and why of the solution, or to explain the logic of how I figured out how to do it so you could create more customizations like the one in the article. So I started writing the book…

The book has these goals: take what I’ve done in the blog articles as a start and then greatly expand the number of tips and tricks, explain how the tricks work, show how they can be expanded to other uses, and provide a few chapters on basic SharePoint, HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills. The first edition of the book fully supports both SharePoint 2007 and 2010 . If you have not upgraded to 2010 yet, you will one day and will want to know how to make sure these tricks still work.

About the other 80%

Writing a book fits the 80 / 20 rule. The first 80% of the work takes 80% of the time, and the remaining work also takes 80% of the time. :-( My biggest challenge in this project is knowing when to stop. It seems I can always find just one more way to do something, one more trick or one more screen capture. Where possible I’m rewriting each tip to work in SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, and as often as possible using the same code for both. I’m also adding jQuery versions of some of the examples for those who are already working with jQuery. I’m testing every trick in Internet Explorer 6 to 8 and FireFox and rewriting the JavaScript to work with all of these browsers. (really fun, let me tell ya…)

Book Progress

Most of the chapters are finished and are now being proof read by some nasty critics. The cover art still needs to be done. The index needs to be created. When all of that is done, the book needs to be submitted and a test copy printed to see if everything “works”, things like margins, images, cover art, etc.

How it will be published

I don’t see this book ever being finished. There’s just too many things I’m learning about SharePoint everyday. Books published though the traditional channels rarely get updated and I want to update the book as needed. So I am going the “self published” route using a service owned by Amazon.com. It will be first released in print format and I hope to move the book into Kindle and other electronic formats as I get time.

A supporting web site

The book will have a version number! (Should I start with a beta release?) For that and a number of other reasons the book will also have a supporting web site. There you will find all of the source code, a number of the tricks as downloadable web parts along with any new additions. So don’t get upset if you see a version 1.1 of the book after you bought 1.0. The changes will be on the site.

Here’s the current, but still incomplete, table of contents:

(This will change over the next few weeks…)

+ Chapter 1 - Read Me First

+ Chapter 2 - An HTML Primer

+ Chapter 3 - A CSS Primer

+ Chapter 4 - A JavaScript Primer

+ Chapter 5 - Hacking Tips!

+ Chapter 6 - SharePoint Designer

+ Chapter 7 - Customizing SharePoint Pages

+ Chapter 8 - Web Part Must Knows

+ Chapter 9 - The Content Editor Web Part

+ Chapter 10 - User Interface Customization

+ Chapter 11 - List and Library Customization

+ Chapter 12 - Surveys

+ Chapter 13 - Links Lists

+ Chapter 14 - Task Lists

+ Chapter 15 - Calendars

+ Chapter 16 - Security Tricks

+ Chapter 17 - Sound, Video, Silverlight and Flash!

Be patient! I working as fast as I can. :-)

1/19/2011

SharePoint 2010: Site Title and Icon - Change the Font Size, Face or Hide It

Customizing the site title is a bit harder in 2010 than in 2007 as the site title is part of a larger navigation area that includes the title, a "crumb trail" and the View menu. In this article we will look at using CSS to change the font, color or size of the text. Also see here to change how the whole navigation and crumb trail area works.

Here's the home page of a site. "Demo Site" is the name of the site.

The following shows the title, crumb trail and view menu for a library. "Demo Site" is the title, "Shared Documents" is a library and "All Documents" is both the current view and the view dropdown menu button.

Here's a similar site with the view menu clicked:

So as you can see, there a lot of pieces to change to customize the title area in 2010. Now lets take a look at what is required to make the changes for a sample like this one by just using CSS:

You would most likely want to make this kind of change for an entire site rather than a single page by using a master page edit. If you want to make these changes for a single page just add a text file with the CSS to a library, add a Content Editor Web Part and then link to the text file. You could also just edit this page in SharePoint Designer and add the CSS to the page.

To make your changes available for all pages in your site, add them to the site's master page.

Steps:

Open your site in SharePoint Designer 2010 (see Chapter 6)
In the "Navigation - Site Objects" pane click Master Pages
Right-click your site's master page (typically v4.master) and select "Edit in Advanced Mode"
Search for "</head>" and insert your style block before the </head> tag

Here are some of the CSS tags to experiment with:

Changing fonts and colors using CSS

Each part of the page can be hidden or changed by using a CSS style. Here are the styles and the parts:

.s4-titlelogo
#s4-titlerow	The entire title row including "I Like It" and "Tags & Notes"
.s4-titletext h1 a	The site title text
.ms-WikiPageNameEditor-Display	Title of any wiki-style page (home page of a Team Site or a page added with "Site Actions, New page"
.s4-titletext h2 a	List/Library name
.s4-titletext h2	Folder name
#zz17_ListTitleViewSelectorMenu_t	Current view and view selector
#onetidPageTitleSeparator	The triangles between the items ""

Note: "." indicates a class while "#" indicates an ID

To hide everything after the title:

<style>

.s4-titletext h2 <!-- everything after the site title -->
{
display:none;
}

#onetidPageTitleSeparator <!-- The triangles between the items -->
{
display:none
}

</style>

Here's a set of sample styles to change the Site Title, the List Name and the View Selector:

<style>

.s4-titletext h1 a <!-- The site title text -->
{
color:Blue;
font-size:24pt;
}

.s4-titletext h2 a <!-- list / library name -->
{
color:red;
font-size:18pt;
}

#zz17_ListTitleViewSelectorMenu_t <!-- current view and menu -->
{
color:green;
font-size:12pt;
}

</style>

And here's the page using the above styles:

1/12/2011

Interesting SharePoint Controls: WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers

This is the first of a series of articles on “Interesting SharePoint Controls”. For more controls see here.

<SharePoint:WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers>

This control is available only in SharePoint 2010.

The SharePoint 2010 master pages include this control to warn users that they are using an unsupported browser (primarily IE 6). The control is used like this by default:

<SharePoint:WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers runat="server"/>

and displays this:

“Your Web browser will have problems displaying this web page. Changes to the site may not function properly. For a better experience, please update your browser to its latest version.”

Note to branders and master page editors: IF your redesigned master page is “IE 6 safe” then delete this control from your master page.

Interesting… Microsoft added it to v4.master and admin.master, but not to default.master (the 2007 style master) or to minimal.master.

More info: (what little there is…)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.warnonunsupportedbrowsers.aspx

Interesting SharePoint Controls

Recently while reviewing a SharePoint 2010 developer class it occurred to me that the class made no mention of any of the SharePoint controls. So as I get the time I’ll write a description and find a sample or two of use for the more interesting controls. I’ll use this page as a “table of contents” for these articles.

These controls are all part of the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls namespace.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.aspx

Here’s the first two:

<SharePoint:WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers> (2010 only)
<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl> (an older article, but for both 2007 & 2010)
more to come…

1/11/2011

PowerShell to find SharePoint Content Types

A few quick PowerShell scripts…

Find all lists that support a particular content type:

$webs = get-spsite http://yourserver/sites/yoursite | get-spweb 

foreach ($web in $webs) 
{
  foreach ($lst in $web.lists) 
  { 
    foreach ($ctype in $lst.ContentTypes) 
    { 
      if ($ctype.Name -eq "Document") 
      { $lst.DefaultViewUrl }
    }
  } 
  $web.Dispose() 
}

(Can be typed as all one line.)

For SharePoint 2007 replace the first line with these three:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

$site = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite(http://yourserver/sites/yoursite)

$webs = $site.AllWebs

Find all list items of a particular content type:

$webs = get-spsite http://yourserver/sites/yoursite | get-spweb 

foreach ($web in $webs)
{
  foreach ($lst in $web.lists)
  {
    foreach ($item in $lst.Items)
    {
      if ($item.ContentType.Name -eq "Document")
      { $item.Url}
    }
  }
  $web.Dispose() 
}

(Can be typed as all one line.)

Get a list of all Content Types in a web:

$site = Get-SPSite http://yourserver/sites/yoursite

$web = $site.RootWeb

foreach ($ctype in $web.ContentTypes) {$ctype.Name}

These examples used the content type’s name property. You could also use the ID property.

C#

And for completeness, here’s a C# version to find all lists that support a particular content type:

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace ConsoleApplication6
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            SPSite site = new SPSite(http://yourserver/sites/yoursite);
            
            SPWebCollection webs = site.AllWebs;
            foreach (SPWeb web in webs) { 
                foreach (SPList lst in web.Lists) { 
                    foreach (SPContentType ctype in lst.ContentTypes) { 
                        if (ctype.Name == "Document") {
                            Console.WriteLine(lst.DefaultViewUrl);
                        } 
                    }
                }
                web.Dispose();
            }
            site.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

1/10/2011

Reading the contents of a SharePoint library file using PowerShell

I recently needed to read the text from a file in a SharePoint library using PowerShell. The only real challenge was converting the return ByteArray into a string. This might be a rare requirement, but just in case someone else might need it.

$site   = Get-SPSite http://yourserver/sites/yoursite
$web    = $site.RootWeb
$list   = $web.Lists["Shared Documents"]
$item   = $list.Items[0]
$file   = $item.File
$data   = $file.OpenBinary()
$encode = New-Object System.Text.ASCIIEncoding

$test   = $encode.GetString($data)

Yes, it can be done in fewer steps… but for completeness…

For SharePoint 2007 replace the first line with these two:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

$site = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://yourserver/sites/yoursite")

Mike Smith's Tech Training Notes
SharePoint, PowerShell and .Net!

Pages

2/05/2011

SharePoint Cincy – Major SharePoint Event Coming to Cincinnati!

About time!

Are you, or do you know a SharePoint “guru”?

1/31/2011

SharePoint 2010 Internet Site Upgrade Watch Out!

SharePoint 2010 Team Sites have two home pages!

Fix it

Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Meeting

Next meeting: Thursday February 3, 2011 6:30 PM

1/29/2011

SharePoint: Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed - Excel 2010 Excel Import problems

1/22/2011

Book Update

SharePoint® 2007 and 2010 Customization for the Site Owner

About the other 80%

Book Progress

How it will be published

A supporting web site

Here’s the current, but still incomplete, table of contents:

1/19/2011

SharePoint 2010: Site Title and Icon - Change the Font Size, Face or Hide It

To make your changes available for all pages in your site, add them to the site's master page.

Here are some of the CSS tags to experiment with:

Changing fonts and colors using CSS

1/12/2011

Interesting SharePoint Controls: WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers

<SharePoint:WarnOnUnsupportedBrowsers>

Interesting SharePoint Controls

1/11/2011

PowerShell to find SharePoint Content Types

Find all lists that support a particular content type:

Find all list items of a particular content type:

Get a list of all Content Types in a web:

C#

1/10/2011

Reading the contents of a SharePoint library file using PowerShell

Note to spammers!