PowerShell Saturday! -- Interested in a PowerShell user group in Cincinnati?

 

PowerShell Saturday in Columbus

The first ever PowerShell Saturday will be held in Columbus, OH on March 10th. If you have not already registered, then it’s too late! It’s a sell out! But you might want to check the link below to see if they open up any more tickets.

    Tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2860436643/eorg

    I got my ticket!

 

PowerShell in Cincinnati?

So… would you be interested in either a Cincinnati area PowerShell user group and / or a Cincinnati PowerShell Saturday? Post a response below and let me know. (All posts are moderated, so if you don’t want your post public, just say so.)

 

Mike

 

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SharePoint: Finding the Site GUID

 

Had a nice quite evening planned, and then someone sends me in search of a wild goose... 

Because of a security issue they could not use my little GUID getter tool on their site and they were looking for some other way of getting a site GUID.

The wild goose hunt paid off as I found two…

For those who have bought my book, you may want add a note on page 307 to see this article.

 

1) Wiki home page:
Works for SP 2010 only: Display a Team Site home page (a wiki home page, home.aspx) that has at least one list web part, view the source of the page (right-view source) and search for "RelatedWebId"  (you could temporarily add an Announcements or library web part to the page)

    WebPartWPQ2_RelatedWebId="{f70832a4-5d0d-4265-a344-ea10a0007160}"

2) Tree View:
Works for both SP 2007 and SP 2010: Go to Site Actions, Site Settings, Tree View and enable Tree View. Then go to any page, view source and search for "ListNode:"

   spNavigateHierarchy(this,'','30:ListNode:f70832a4-5d0d-4265-a344-ea10a0007160:740...

 

Here's one for the PowerShell users that requires admin access to the servers:

Open "SharePoint 2010 Management Shell"  (PowerShell for SharePoint)
Enter:
  $site = Get-SPSite  http://yourserver/sites/yoursitename
  $web = $site.AllWebs["yoursubsitename"]     or  $site.RootWeb   for the root site
  $web.ID
    Guid
    ----
    f70832a4-5d0d-4265-a344-ea10a0007160

 

I guess the wild goose chase at least got me another blog article.  :-)

 

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SharePoint Error: This item is no longer available. It may have been deleted by another user

 

Error: “This item is no longer available.  It may have been deleted by another user.  Click 'OK' to refresh the page.”

 

A Missing Permission

This error is caused by either out of date pages that need to be refreshed, as you would expect from the message, or from a missing permission. If the user does not have the “View Application pages” then they cannot get to “forms, views and application pages”. Although not listed in the permission page, they also are not allowed to see dropdown menus from list items displayed in a web part.  I.e. they can see the web part, they can see the list item or document, but they can’t display that item through a form, view or dropdown. In a library they can click the document and open it.

  

 

The “View Application pages” Permission

You might uncheck this permission when you want users to visit a home page of a site, but not navigate directly to lists and libraries. To give these users access to content you would add web parts to the home page for these lists.

 

The “View Application pages” Permission and the Access Denied error

Important! When disabling this permission you should create your list web parts to only display data. Do not display links to the item’s forms. If they click a link they will get this error:

   

 

When Creating a Web Part View

For list web parts:

When creating list web part views for users without the “View Application Pages” permission always select one of the options without a link.

   

 

For library web parts:

When creating library web part views for users without the “View Application Pages” permission always select one of the options with a “linked to document”.

The document will then open, be opened in an Office Web App or be downloaded. The user will not be able to get to a form (or get the error messages).

 

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SharePoint: How to add JavaScript to a Content Editor Web Part

 

The following may be a bit redundant as it has been part of many of my “JavaScript hacks” posts, but I’m asked so often I thought I would put it in a article by itself.

 

The Content Editor Web Part (CEWP)

SharePoint 2007 gave us a nice little web part to insert HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and even just some text, in any web part page. SharePoint 2010 “broke” this web part a bit by trying to “fix up” our code. Add a little JavaScript to a CEWP and you will get this message:

   

The message may mean that it did nothing to your code, reformatted your code (in strange ways), or completely removed your code!

Here’s a before and after of a “reformat”: 

 

 

Link to your custom code, don’t add it directly to the CEWP

For both 2007 and 2010 the best practice is to link from the CEWP to a text file with your content. To avoid the problem with the random edits made by 2010 just upload a text file containing the code to a library. Then in the CEWP just click the Edit Web Part option in the dropdown and add the link to the code file. This has added benefit of using any HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor such as Visual Studio or SharePoint Designer to edit your code.

 

Steps:

1. Create your HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript in a text file, Notepad will do, and save it with any file extension.
   Tip: Name your file with a .HTM extension and then the SharePoint libraries will add a “Edit in SharePoint Designer” link in the file’s dropdown menu!
      
   
   Notes: Your JavaScript should be enclosed in <script> tags and your CSS should be enclosed in <style> tags.
   
    
2. After uploading to a library, right-click the file’s name and copy the shortcut
      
   
3. Go go your SharePoint and insert a Content Editor Web Part
   (2010 on the left, 2007 on the right)
      
    
4. Click the web part’s dropdown menu and click Edit
      
    
5. Paste the URL to the Notepad file in the Content Link box
       
    
6. Save your changes and test
   
   And if you have any errors, just open the HTM file in SharePoint Designer, make your changes and save, and then go back to the browser and click refresh!  Much faster than constantly editing and save the web part.

 

Hide the title area

If the CEWP only contains HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript then you may want to hide the web part’s title bar. In the properties editor, expand Appearance, click the Chrome Type dropdown and select None.

   

Tip: Don’t “hide” the web part. Just turn off its title bar.

 

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What do you call that? How do you capitalize this? The Microsoft Manual of Style

 

How do you…

If you write in the world of technology, whether blogs, books, training manuals, or even PowerPoint slides for your local user group, then you are often asking things like:

• Is it “sub-folder” or “subfolder”?
• What is that thing at the bottom of the screen called?
• Is it an “Application Menu” or an “App Menu”?
• Is it a “Status Bar” or a “status bar”

In the old days we would often refer to the Chicago Manual of Style for general writing guidelines, and over the years for Microsoft related writing, the Microsoft Manual of Style. The problem with the Microsoft manual is that is was getting quite dated, it was last updated in 2004, and in technology, that’s the dark ages!

The Microsoft Manual of Style as finally been updated, and what an update! I’ve only browsed though it picking up things here and there, and I’ve got to put it down and get back to work! They have included everything I need and even added coverage for Windows Phone. 437 pages of good stuff.

It’s not 100% complete as it does not have a product by product focus. SharePoint is not in the index! But, the book has to be light enough to carry, and there are other resources for products like SharePoint. (SharePoint glossary: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ee556558.aspx)

 

There’s no excuse not to get it!

The paper back version is only $16.35 at Amazon and the Kindle version is only $9.95. You should get both… I’ve already dog-eared my paper copy and filled it with “stickies”, and I want the Kindle version to have with me everywhere I go. 

And, no you can’t borrow my copy!

(But I will bring it to the SharePoint User Group meeting Thursday night if you like to take a peek.)

 

 

Chapter 1: Microsoft style and voice

Chapter 2: Content for the web

Chapter 3: Content for a worldwide audience

Chapter 4: Accessible content

Chapter 5: The user interface

Chapter 6: Procedures and technical content

Chapter 7: Practical issues of style

Chapter 8: Grammar

Chapter 9: Punctuation

Chapter 10: Index and keywords

Chapter 11: Acronyms and other abbreviations

 

(and yes, they did their chapter titles with lower case words! I’ll have to look that one up too…)

 

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Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Lightning Round this Thursday Evening!

 

Below is my post from last week about the “Lightning Rounds” presentations for this Thursday’s Cincinnati SharePoint User Group meeting.  (and yes… I did mistype it as “Lighting Rounds”… oh well…)

So far we have presentations lined up for these topics: (exact titles TBD)

• Do you need a File Upload Web Part to allow uploading of files without giving access to the Document Library?
• Tricks for personalizing content to users
• Enable consistent deployment from the development environment to the production environment using PowerShell to create easily maintained code that SharePoint admins can trust
• SharePoint & SQL Reporting Services
• How to Give Back to the SharePoint Community with a Blog and the MSDN Forums

We still have room for one or two more presentations!  Send us a one paragraph topic proposal and your estimate of presentation length. Send it to point2share@gmail.com or just post a reply to this article with your email address and I’ll get back to you. Don’t worry about your email address as I will keep your reply unpublished and private.

 

Mike

 

 

 

=========================================================

 

The Cincinnati SharePoint User Group meets the first Thursday of every month at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, Ohio (directions). The next meeting is 2/2/2012.

 

Lighting Round!

February  is our "Lighting Round" meeting where everyone is welcome to submit a proposal to speak for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. These have been a lot of fun in the past and no matter your interest in SharePoint, there will be something interesting!  (Think “SharePoint Saturday in 90 minutes”)

If you have never spoken at a SharePoint user group meeting before, this is just about the easiest way to get started. Pick your favorite aspect of SharePoint, or the latest cool SharePoint related thing you have done, and tell us about it. You don't even need slides, and if you do create slides, you probably won't need more than five or so. Keep it short, keep it interesting and have fun! (And when you are done, you can put "User group speaker" on your resume and be well on your way to SharePoint Saturday fame!)

We are looking for topics like these:

• administrator
• developer
• best practices
• worst practices / war stories / don’t try this at home
• end user
• site owner
• customization tricks
• SharePoint Online / Office 365
• SharePoint for small groups and / or non-profits
• or anything interesting about SharePoint!

But… no sales pitches!

 

To get the ball rolling I will start us out with this little presentation...

How to Give Back to the SharePoint Community with a Blog and the MSDN Forums
In 10 minutes we will create a blog site, do a little customization, setup an automatic Twitter feed and configure Google Analytics so you will know if anyone is reading your blog.
In the next 5 minutes we will setup an MSDN Forums account and start answering questions!

 

Now it’s your turn!

 

Send us a one paragraph topic proposal and your estimate of presentation length. If you don’t know how to reach me or someone in the user group then just post a reply to this article with your email address and I’ll get back to you. Don’t worry about your email address as I will keep your reply unpublished and private.

 

Mike

 

p.s. If there’s anyone reading this from “vendor land” and you would like to make a door prize donation to the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group, or even sponsor a meeting, please contact me.

 

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A New SharePoint Designer 2010 Class

 

SharePoint Designer 2010 Class

This week I will deliver a new SharePoint Designer 2010 class at MAX Technical Training. We reviewed all of the existing classes we could find, and none met our requirements. The problem with most SharePoint Designer classes is that they focus on SharePoint Designer the program rather than what you can do with SharePoint Designer to customize your SharePoint sites. This class focuses on getting things done!

The first offering for this class is this Thursday, 2/2/2012 and covers both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Online / Office 365.

Not sure if this class is for you? Email me at with any questions.

Here’s a partial list of the modules:

• How SharePoint uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• How SharePoint Uses ASP.NET and SharePoint Controls and how you can tweak them
• Creating and Customizing Pages
• Customizing SharePoint Navigation
• Working with SharePoint Master Pages
• The Data View Web Part – Creating Custom Views
• The Data View Web Part – Working with XSLT
• The Data View Web Part – Accessing External Data
• JavaScript and CSS Tricks!

Except for the last bullet, this list does not hint at all of the tricks and tips I’ve included from playing working with SharePoint all of these years.

Here’s a few of those tips:

• Convert Quick Launch to a pop out menu to save space
• How remove the Quick Launch area from a page, or put it back in those pages where Microsoft hid it
• Customize the page’s title area to display a banner, and as a bonus, get the 2007 style full crumb trail back
• Create custom data entry forms for lists
• Create a custom RSS web part to display RSS feeds from other SharePoint sites
• Show or hide content and customizations based on permissions
• Make the Tree View useful – show only libraries, or only show subsites etc
• and more…

 

Register Now!

So, if you’d like to learn how to take the next level of control of your SharePoint site, click http://www.maxtrain.com/Classes/ClassInfo.aspx?Id=32766 and pop over to the MAX web site and sign up for this class.

Tell them Mike sent you and I’ll get you a free copy of my book or a SharePoint Designer book like this one.

 

MA-1083 - Sharepoint Designer 2010 - Customizing and Branding SharePoint

February 2, 2012 as MAX Technical Training

 

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SharePoint 2010: Cannot find ContentPlaceHolder 'PlaceHolderLeftActions' in the master page '~masterurl/default.master' #sharepoint #sp2010

 

A simple error caused by a minimal problem   ;-)

 

The odds are you or someone on your team was playing with master pages and set the minimal.master as the default master page. As the minimal master is not a complete master page, some of the place holders needed by many pages are missing.

 

SharePoint Designer

To fix, just go to SharePoint Designer and reapply the v4.master (or which ever master you normally use.)

   

 

Site Actions, Site Settings

The Settings page has a fall back master page (Simplev4.master) to use whenever there is an error loading a master page. So if you don’t have SharePoint Designer available, and you are using a site based on a publishing template, then you can just navigate to the Site Settings page and pick a master page there.

http://yourserver/sites/yoursitecollection/_Layouts/settings.aspx

or just go directly to:

http://yourserver/sites/yoursitecollection/_Layouts/ChangeSiteMasterPage.aspx

Note, this only works with sites with the publishing features enabled.

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Cincinnati SharePoint User Group Lightning Round in February!

 

The Cincinnati SharePoint User Group meets the first Thursday of every month at 6:00 PM at MAX Technical Training in Mason, Ohio (directions). The next meeting is 2/2/2012.

 

Lighting Round!

February  is our "Lighting Round" meeting where everyone is welcome to submit a proposal to speak for anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. These have been a lot of fun in the past and no matter your interest in SharePoint, there will be something interesting!  (Think “SharePoint Saturday in 90 minutes”)

If you have never spoken at a SharePoint user group meeting before, this is just about the easiest way to get started. Pick your favorite aspect of SharePoint, or the latest cool SharePoint related thing you have done, and tell us about it. You don't even need slides, and if you do create slides, you probably won't need more than five or so. Keep it short, keep it interesting and have fun! (And when you are done, you can put "User group speaker" on your resume and be well on your way to SharePoint Saturday fame!)

We are looking for topics like these:

• administrator
• developer
• best practices
• worst practices / war stories / don’t try this at home
• end user
• site owner
• customization tricks
• SharePoint Online / Office 365
• SharePoint for small groups and / or non-profits
• or anything interesting about SharePoint!

But… no sales pitches!

 

To get the ball rolling I will start us out with this little presentation...

How to Give Back to the SharePoint Community with a Blog and the MSDN Forums
In 10 minutes we will create a blog site, do a little customization, setup an automatic Twitter feed and configure Google Analytics so you will know if anyone is reading your blog.
In the next 5 minutes we will setup an MSDN Forums account and start answering questions!

 

Now it’s your turn!

 

Send us a one paragraph topic proposal and your estimate of presentation length. If you don’t know how to reach me or someone in the user group then just post a reply to this article with your email address and I’ll get back to you. Don’t worry about your email address as I will keep your reply unpublished and private.

 

Mike

 

p.s. If there’s anyone reading this from “vendor land” and you would like to make a door prize donation to the Cincinnati SharePoint User Group, or even sponsor a meeting, please contact me.

 

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What Time is it in SharePoint Land? (I missed your meeting because of the time listed in the calendar!)

 

Luis is SharePoint user working on a SharePoint installation installed in the corporate headquarters in Los Angles. The server there is setup on Pacific Time (UTC-08:00). Sam is a team member based in the Atlanta office who has changed his Regional Settings to Eastern Time (UTC-05:00).

Sam schedules a Team Meeting for 10:00 AM.

Luis checks the team calendar as sees:

Luis is in Chicago, knows that Sam is in Atlanta and is wondering why Sam scheduled a meeting for 7:00 AM! Which… is 6:00 AM in Chicago!

 

So What Time is it in SharePoint Land?

Sam did schedule the meeting for 10:00 AM, his time, which is 9:00 AM in Chicago. The problem here is that Luis has never set his Regional Settings and is seeing the server’s default time, which is Pacific.

 

How do we fix this?

If most of the site’s users are in the Chicago area, then we could change the site’s regional settings to Central time. This won’t bother Sam as he has set his preference for time zone in his regional settings. This solves the problem for Luis and other members of the team in the Central time zone. But… it may confuse users back in the home office where they are in Pacific time.

 

What to do?

A) Tell everyone that all times will be in headquarter’s time (Pacific)
  or

B) Train everyone on how to set their time zone preference
  or

C) Create some automation (PowerShell) to update everyone’s time zone based on the region they work in

 

How to change the time zone for the server

Central Administration –> Application Management –> select your application –> in the Ribbon click General Settings, and General Settings and then change the time zone.

How to change the time zone for a single site

Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Regional Settings –> Time Zone

How to change the time zone for a single user

Ask the user to visit any site, click their name at the top right of the page (the Welcome menu) –> click My Settings –> Click My Regional Settings –> uncheckmark Always follow web settings –> Time Zone

 

Note that user settings will override site and application settings and that site settings will override application settings.

 

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