BCS connector for Exchange private mailbox SharePoint and FAST search

SharePoint 2010 BCS Mailbox connector for Microsoft Exchange empowers you search private mailboxes via SharePoint and FAST Search.
SharePoint 2010 BCS Mailbox connector for Microsoft Exchange  allow you:

• Index all mailboxes, emails and attachments
• Enable super users from AD group search against all mailboxes
• Preview Exchange emails and attachments directly from search user interface via SharePoint Business Connectivity services.

  Microsoft provides Exchange OOB connector for SharePoint 2010 search and FAST Search for SharePoint.
  Unfortunately this connector limited to Exchange public folder only.

  Please, make sure you download following dependencies:

  • Exchange Web Services Managed API
• 

How To : Understanding and Use the Search logic for Silverlight controls in Coded UI Test

Understanding the Search logic for Silverlight controls in Coded UI Test

 

One of the primary objectives during recording in Coded UI Test is to generate a robust search condition for a UI control to be uniquely identifiable during playback. In this post I’ll mention some of the search logic specific to the Silverlight UI Automation support within Coded UI Test introduced in the VS 2010 Feature Pack 2.

Search condition generation during Recording

 

For Silverlight control, Coded UI Test relies primarily on the Automation properties of the control. The sequence of looking for a search property in order descending of priority is

AutomationId,

Name,

LabeledBy,

HelpText,

AccessKey,

AcceleratorKey

Specific controls support additional searchable properties. For instance, Button supports  “DisplayText”, Image supports “Source”, DataGrid Cell supports “ColumnIndex” searchable property and likewise. The various search configurations mentioned here are applicable to Silverlight control search too (except for the SearchConfiguration.VisibleOnly configuration).

For a Silverlight object hosted in IE, the search hierarchy will consist of an IE search part and Silverlight search part –

 

Top Level Window à {IE Search Hierarchy} à Silverlight Root Visual Element à Parent of Target Element à Target Element.

 

Additional hierarchy can be generated in between the Parent and Silverlight Root Visual element based on the specific control requirement. For example, certain controls such as Datagrid, Tree, TreeItem, Tab, List Item are, at almost all times, included in the search hierarchy if they are found in the ancestor hierarchy of the target element. As an example, the extended search hierarchy of a DataGrid Cell will show up as something like

 

TopLevelWindow à {IE Search Hierarchy} à Root Visual Element (Silverlight) à DataGridTable (Silverlight) à DataGridRow(Silverlight) à DataGridCell (Silverlight)

 

 

Search path during Playback

 

The overall search logic remains identical to what is followed in other UI technologies. It is a breadth first search wherein the top level window is first searched and used as a container for searching the next control in the search condition hierarchy. This is done recursively until the leaf control in the search hierarchy is found.

 

As an example, for a simple button inside a Silverlight page, the search hierarchy will be typically of the format –

 

TopLevelWindow à Document (IE BODY Tag) à Pane (IE DIV Tag) à Custom (IE OBJECT Tag) à Root Visual Element (Silverlight) à Button (Silverlight).

 

For the top-down search till the IE Object Tag, the existing search features and settings in Coded UI Test are applicable. Once the search switches to the Silverlight technology (i.e. Root Visual element of the Silverlight page), there are few limitations to the search.

 

What is missing currently in Silverlight control search?

 

1. PlaybackSettings.ShouldSearchFailFast

• This setting is not honored currently. However, there is some level of customization that can be done using the PlaybackSettings.SearchTimeout and the Playback.PlaybackSettings.WaitForReadyTimeout settings to tweak the timeout at which the search should abort. The later may not seem obvious, and is hence explained in more detail in a section below.

 

2. PlaybackSettings.MatchExactHierarchy

Silverlight control search does not currently honor  MatchExactHierarchy = false. So, the search condition specified for the entire Silverlight hierarchy needs to be accurate for the search to succeed. In the above example, it is the Root Visual Element and the Button control.

 

3. Playback.PlaybackSettings.SmartMatchOptions

• Control level smart match is not currently supported i.e. Control

Note that Regex match is not yet supported in Coded UI Test. So the only option available is to specify the PropertyExpressionOperator.Contains condition operator in the search properties.

For example, if the button’s name is of format “Submit<SomeDynamicId>”, the search property can be defined as –

uISubmitButton.SearchProperties.Add(“Name”, “Submit”, PropertyExpressionOperator.Contains);

 

4. There is no concept of FilterProperties as supported in Web Technology in Coded UI Test.

 

 

How to handle search failures because of slow page loading?

 

If the XAP download takes a huge amount of time to load, the search during playback would fail since the Silverlight controls will not have been rendered in the visual tree. The internal search algorithm uses a wait and retry logic to search for a control while checking the visual tree rendering status at each wait interval (this time interval is upped exponentially on each iteration).

I will not be explaining the details here, but the important thing to note is that if there is no rendering happening within a polling interval, the search will return with failure status.

This polling interval is currently set to half of the Playback.PlaybackSettings.WaitForReadyTimeout which has a default value of 60 seconds (i.e. the default polling interval is 30 seconds). So to tackle slow page loading time, you can configure this Playback.PlaybackSettings.WaitForReadyTimeout to a desired value.

Note: Playback.PlaybackSettings.WaitForReadyTimeout does affect the normal search failure time in scenarios where there is some visual rendering happening in the Silverlight page. So you would need to strike an appropriate balance based on the type of application you are testing.

How To : Understand and Edit the Onet.xml File

When Microsoft SharePoint Foundation is installed, several Onet.xml files are installed—one in %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\XML that applies globally to the deployment, and several in different folders within %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates. Each file in the latter group corresponds to a site definition that is included with SharePoint Foundation. They include, for example, Blog sites, the Central Administration site, Meeting Workspace sites, and team SharePoint sites. Only the last two of these families contain more than one site definition configuration.

The global Onet.xml file defines list templates for hidden lists, list base types, a default definition configuration, and modules that apply globally to the deployment. Each Onet.xml file in a subdirectory of the %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates directory can define navigational areas, list templates, document templates, configurations, modules, components, and server email footers that are used in the site definition to which it corresponds.

Note
An Onet.xml is also part of a web template. Some Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) elements that are possible in the Onet.xml files of site definitions cannot be in the Onet.xml files that are part of web templates—for example, the DocumentTemplates element.

Functions of Onet.xml

Depending on where an Onet.xml file is located and whether it is part of a site definition or a web template, the markup in the file does some or all of the following:

• Specifies the web-scoped and site collection-scoped Features that are built-in to websites that are created from the site definition or web template.
• Specifies the list types, pages, files, and Web Parts that are built-in to websites that are created from the site definition or web template.
• Defines the top and side navigation areas that appear on the home page and in list views for a site definition.
• Specifies the list definitions that are used in each site definition and whether they are available for creating lists in the user interface (UI).
• Specifies document templates that are available in the site definition for creating document library lists in the UI, and specifies the files that are used in the document templates.
• Defines the base list types from which default SharePoint Foundation lists are derived. (Only the global Onet.xml file serves this function. You cannot define new base list types.)
• Specifies SharePoint Foundation components.
• Defines the footer section used in server email.

 

Web Site Definition Tasks with a Custom Onet.xml

You can perform the following kinds of tasks in a custom Onet.xml file that is used for either a custom site definition or a custom web template:

• Specify an alternative cascading style sheet (CSS) file, JavaScript file, or ASPX header file for a site definition.
• Modify navigation areas for the home page and list pages.
• Add a new list definition as an option in the UI.
• Define one configuration for the site definition or web template, specifying the lists, modules, files, and Web Parts that are included when the configuration is instantiated.
• Specify Features to be included automatically with websites that are created from the site definition or web template.

You can perform the following kinds of tasks in a custom Onet.xml file that is used for a custom site definition, but not in one that is used for a custom web template:

1. Add a document template for creating document libraries.
2. Define more than one configuration for a site definition, specifying the lists, modules, files, and Web Parts that are included when the configuration is instantiated.
3. Define a custom footer for email messages that are sent from websites that are based on the site definition.
4. Define custom components, such as a file dialog box post processor, for websites that are based on the site definition.

Caution
You cannot create new base list types in either a site definition or a web template. The base types that are defined in the global Onet.xml file are the only base types that are supported.

Caution

We do not support making changes to an originally installed Onet.xml file. Changing this file can break existing sites. Also, when you install updates or service packs for SharePoint Foundation, or when you upgrade an installation to the next product version, there may be a new version of the Microsoft-supplied file, and installation cannot merge your changes with the new version. If you want a site type that is similar to a built-in site type, and you cannot use a web template, create a new site definition with its own Onet.xml file; do not modify the original file. For more information, see How to: Create a Custom Site Definition and Configuration. For more information about when you cannot use a web template, see Deciding Between Custom Web Templates and Custom Site Definitions.

File Format

The following sections define the various elements of the Onet.xml file.

Project Element

The top-level Project element specifies a default name for sites that are created through any of the site configurations in the site definition. It also specifies the directory that contains subfolders in which the files for each list definition reside.

Note
Unless indicated otherwise, excerpts used in the following examples are taken from the Onet.xml file for the STS site definition.

XML

<Project 
  Title="$Resources:core,onet_TeamWebSite;" 
  Revision="2" 
  ListDir="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;" 
  xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint" 
  UIVersion="4">

Note
In all the examples in this topic, the strings that begin with “$Resources” are constants that are defined in a .resx file. For example, “$Resources:onet_TeamWebSite” is defined in the core.resx file as “Team Site”. When you create a custom Onet.xml file, you can use literal strings.

This element can also have several other attributes. For more information, see Project Element (Site).

The Project element does not contain any attribute that identifies the site definition that it defines. Each Onet.xml file is associated with a site definition by virtue of the directory path in where it resides, which (except for the global Onet.xml) is %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\site_type\XML\, where site_type is the name of the site definition, such as STS or MPS. The Onet.xml file for a web template is associated with the template by virtue of being in the .wsp package for the web template.

 

NavBars Element

The NavBars element contains definitions for the top navigation area that is displayed on the home page or in list views, and definitions for the side navigation area that is displayed on the home page.

Note
A NavBar is not necessarily a toolbar. For example, it can be a tree of links.

XML

<NavBars>
  <NavBar 
    Name="$Resources:core,category_Top;" 
    Separator="&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;" 
    Body="&lt;a ID='onettopnavbar#LABEL_ID#' href='#URL#' accesskey='J'&gt;#LABEL#&lt;/a&gt;" 
    ID="1002" />
  <NavBar 
    Name="$Resources:core,category_Documents;" 
    Prefix="&lt;table border='0' cellpadding='4' cellspacing='0'&gt;" 
    Body="&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0'&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;img src='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' id='100' alt='' border='0'&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td valign='top'&gt;&lt;a id='onetleftnavbar#LABEL_ID#' href='#URL#'&gt;#LABEL#&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;" 
    Suffix="&lt;/table&gt;" 
    ID="1004" />
    ...
</NavBars>

A NavBarLink element defines links for the top or side navigational area, and an entire NavBar section groups new links in the side area. Each NavBar element specifies a display name and a unique ID for the navigation bar, and it defines how to display the navigation bar.

For information about customizing the navigation areas on SharePoint Foundation pages, see Website Navigation.

ListTemplates Element

The ListTemplates section specifies the list definitions that are part of a site definition. This markup is still supported only for backward compatibility. New custom list types should be defined as Features. The following example is taken from the Onet.xml file for the Meetings Workspace site definition.

XML

<ListTemplates>
  <ListTemplate 
    Name="meetings" 
    DisplayName="$Resources:xml_onet_mwsidmeetingDisp;" 
    Type="200" 
    BaseType="0" 
    Unique="TRUE" 
    Hidden="TRUE" 
    HiddenList="TRUE" 
    DontSaveInTemplate="TRUE" 
    SecurityBits="11" 
    Description="$Resources:xml_onet_mwsidmeetingDesc;"
    Image="/_layouts/images/itevent.gif">
  </ListTemplate>
  <ListTemplate 
    Name="agenda" 
    DisplayName="$Resources:xml_onet_mwsidagendaDisp;" 
    Type="201" 
    BaseType="0" 
    FolderCreation="FALSE" 
    DisallowContentTypes="TRUE" 
    SecurityBits="11" 
    Description="$Resources:xml_onet_mwsidagendaDesc" 
    Image="/_layouts/images/itagnda.gif">
  </ListTemplate>
    ...
</ListTemplates>

Each ListTemplate element specifies an internal name that identifies the list definition. The ListTemplate element also specifies a display name for the list definition and whether the option to add a link on the Quick Launch bar appears selected by default in the list-creation UI. In addition, this element specifies the description of the list definition and the path to the image that represents the list definition, both of which are displayed in the list-creation UI. If Hidden=”TRUE” is specified, the list definition does not appear as an option in the list-creation UI.

The ListTemplate element has two attributes for type: Type and BaseType. The Type attribute specifies a unique identifier for the list definition, and the BaseType attribute identifies the base list type for the list definition and corresponds to the Type value that is specified for one of the base list types that are defined in the global Onet.xml file.

For more information about creating new list types, see How to: Create a Custom List Definition.

DocumentTemplates Element

The DocumentTemplates section defines the document templates that are listed in the UI for creating a document library. This markup is still supported only for backward compatibility. You should define new document types as content types. For more information, see the Content Types section of this SDK.

XML

<DocumentTemplates>
  ...
  <DocumentTemplate 
    Path="STS" 
    DisplayName="$Resources:core,doctemp_Word;" 
    Type="121" 
    Default="TRUE" 
    Description="$Resources:core,doctemp_Word_Desc;">
    <DocumentTemplateFiles>
      <DocumentTemplateFile 
        Name="doctemp\word\wdtmpl.dotx" 
        TargetName="Forms/template.dotx" 
        Default="TRUE" />
    </DocumentTemplateFiles>
  </DocumentTemplate>
  ...
</DocumentTemplates>

Each DocumentTemplate element specifies a display name, a unique identifier, and a description for the document template. If Default is set to TRUE, the template is the default template selected for document libraries that are created in sites based one of the configurations in the site definition. Despite its singular name, a DocumentTemplate element actually can contain a collection of DocumentTemplateFile elements. The Name attribute of each DocumentTemplateFile element specifies the relative path to a local file that serves as the template. The TargetName attribute specifies the destination URL of the template file when a document library is created. The Default attribute specifies whether the file is the default template file.

Note
An Onet.xml file in a web template cannot have a DocumentTemplate element.

For a development task that involves document templates, see How to: Add a Document Template, File Type, and Editing Application to a Site Definition.

BaseTypes Element

The BaseTypes element of the global Onet.xml file is used during site or list creation to define the basic list types on which all list definitions in SharePoint Foundation are based. Each list template that is specified in the list templates section is identified with one of the base types: Generic List, Document Library, Discussion Forum, Vote or Survey, or Issues List.

Note
In SharePoint Foundation the BaseTypes section is implemented only in the global Onet.xml file, from which the following example is taken.

XML

<BaseTypes>
  <BaseType 
    Title="Generic List" 
    Image="/_layouts/images/itgen.gif" 
    Type="0">
      <MetaData>
        <Fields>
          <Field 
            ID="{1d22ea11-1e32-424e-89ab-9fedbadb6ce1}" 
            ColName="tp_ID" 
            RowOrdinal="0" 
            ReadOnly="TRUE" 
            Type="Counter" 
            Name="ID" 
            PrimaryKey="TRUE" 
            DisplayName="$Resources:core,ID" 
            SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3" 
            StaticName="ID">
          </Field>
          <Field 
            ID="{03e45e84-1992-4d42-9116-26f756012634}" 
            RowOrdinal="0" 
            Type="ContentTypeId" 
            Sealed="TRUE" 
            ReadOnly="TRUE" 
            Hidden="TRUE" 
            DisplayName="$Resources:core,Content_Type_ID;"
            Name="ContentTypeId" 
            DisplaceOnUpgrade="TRUE"
            SourceID="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/v3" 
            StaticName="ContentTypeId" 
            ColName="tp_ContentTypeId">
          </Field>
          ...
      </Fields>
    </MetaData>
  </BaseType>
  ...
</BaseTypes>

Each BaseType element specifies the fields used in lists that are derived from the base type. The Type attribute of each Field element identifies the field with a field type that is defined in FldTypes.xml.

Caution
Do not modify the contents of the global Onet.xml; doing so can break the installation. Base list types cannot be added. For information about how to add a list definition, see How to: Create a Custom List Definition.

Configurations Element

Each Configuration element in the Configurations section specifies the lists, modules, and Features that are created by default when the site definition configuration or web template is instantiated.

XML

<Configurations>
  ...
  <Configuration 
    ID="0" 
    Name="Default">
    <Lists>
      <List 
        FeatureId="00BFEA71-E717-4E80-AA17-D0C71B360101" 
        Type="101" 
        Title="$Resources:core,shareddocuments_Title;" 
        Url="$Resources:core,shareddocuments_Folder;" 
        QuickLaunchUrl="$Resources:core,shareddocuments_Folder;/Forms/AllItems.aspx" />
      ...
    </Lists>
    <Modules>
      <Module 
        Name="Default" />
    </Modules>
    <SiteFeatures>
      <Feature 
        ID="00BFEA71-1C5E-4A24-B310-BA51C3EB7A57" />
      <Feature 
        ID="FDE5D850-671E-4143-950A-87B473922DC7" />
    </SiteFeatures>
    <WebFeatures>
      <Feature 
        ID="00BFEA71-4EA5-48D4-A4AD-7EA5C011ABE5" />
      <Feature 
        ID="F41CC668-37E5-4743-B4A8-74D1DB3FD8A4" />
    </WebFeatures>
  </Configuration>
  ...
</Configurations>

The ID attribute identifies the configuration (uniquely, relative to the other configurations, if any, within the Configurations element). If the Onet.xml file is part of a site definition, the ID value corresponds to the ID attribute of a Configuration element in a WebTemp*.xml file. (Web templates do not have WebTemp*.xml files.)

Each List element specifies the title of the list definition and the URL for where to create the list. You can use the QuickLaunchUrl attribute to set the URL of the view page to use when adding a link in the Quick Launch to a list that is created from the list definition. The value of the Type attribute corresponds to the Type attribute of a template in the list templates section. Each Module element specifies the name of a module that is defined in the modules section.

The SiteFeatures element and the WebFeatures element contain references to site collection and site-scoped Features to include in the site definition.

For post-processing capabilities, use an ExecuteUrl element within a Configuration element to specify the URL that is called following instantiation of the site.

For more information about definition configurations, see How to: Create a Custom Site Definition and Configuration.

Modules Element

The Modules collection specifies a pool of modules. Any module in the pool can be referenced by a configuration if the module should be included in websites that are created from the configuration. Each Module element in turn specifies one or more files to include, often for Web Parts, which are cached in memory on the front-end web server along with the schema files. You can use the Url attribute of the Module element to provision a folder as part of the site definition. This markup is supported only for backward compatibility. New modules should be incorporated into Features.

XML

<Modules>
  <Modules>
    <Module 
      Name="Default" 
      Url="" 
      Path="">
      <File 
        Url="default.aspx" 
        NavBarHome="True">
        <View 
          List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;
          /$Resources:core,announce_Folder;" 
          BaseViewID="0" 
          WebPartZoneID="Left" />
        <View 
          List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;
          /$Resources:core,calendar_Folder;" 
          BaseViewID="0" 
          RecurrenceRowset="TRUE" 
          WebPartZoneID="Left" 
          WebPartOrder="2" />
        <AllUsersWebPart 
          WebPartZoneID="Right" 
          WebPartOrder="1"><![CDATA[<WebPart 
            xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"
            xmlns:iwp="http://schemas.microsoft.com
            /WebPart/v2/Image">
            <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, 
              Culture=neutral, 
              PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
            <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ImageWebPart
            </TypeName>
            <FrameType>None</FrameType>
            <Title>$Resources:wp_SiteImage;</Title>
            <iwp:ImageLink>/_layouts/images/homepage.gif
            </iwp:ImageLink>
            <iwp:AlternativeText>$Resources:core,sitelogo_wss;
            </iwp:AlternativeText>
            </WebPart>]]>
        </AllUsersWebPart>
        <View 
          List="$Resources:core,lists_Folder;
          /$Resources:core,links_Folder;" 
          BaseViewID="0" 
          WebPartZoneID="Right" 
          WebPartOrder="2" />
          <NavBarPage 
            Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" 
            ID="1002" 
            Position="Start" />
          <NavBarPage 
            Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" 
            ID="0" 
            Position="Start" />
      </File>
    </Module>
  ...
</Modules>

The Module element specifies a name for the module, which corresponds to a module name that is specified within a configuration in Onet.xml.

The Url attribute of each File element in a module specifies the name of a file to create when a site is created. When the module includes a single file, such as default.aspx, NavBarHome=”TRUE” specifies that the file will serve as the destination page for the Home link in navigation bars. The File element for default.aspx also specifies the Web Parts to include on the home page and information about the home page for other pages that link to it.

A Module element can only be in an Onet.xml file that is part of a site definition, not in an Onet.xml file that is part of a web template.

For more information about using modules in SharePoint Foundation, see How to: Provision a File.

Components Element

The Components element specifies components to include in sites that are created through the definition.

XML

<Components>
  <FileDialogPostProcessor ID="BDEADEE4-C265-11d0-BCED-00A0C90AB50F" />
</Components>

A Components element can only be included in an Onet.xml file that is part of a site definition, not in an Onet.xml file that is part of a web template.

ServerEmailFooter Element

The ServerEmailFooter element specifies the footer section used in email that is sent from the server.

XML

<ServerEmailFooter>$Resources:ServerEmailFooter;</ServerEmailFooter>

A ServerEmailFooter element can only be included in an Onet.xml file that is part of a site definition, not in an Onet.xml file that is part of a web template.

HTML5 SharePoint Pic Web Part Released and Available !!

This is a Sandbox web part control to display a matrix of image thumbnails.

For a build a Metro IDE or a Picture Gallery to show products, news, or a social team that integrates with pictures, etc. All this, from any SharePoint picture library.

Supports : SharePoint 2010 & 2013 On-Premise Web Part,  SharePoint Online Web Part

FEATURES OF THE WEB PART** ver. 1.0

     

**PREVIEW EXAMPLE OF THE CONTROL**

 

How to: Customize the SharePoint HTML Editor Field Control using ECM

You can use the HTML Editor field control to insert HTML content into a publishing page. Page templates that include a Publishing HTML column type also include the HTML Editor field control.

This editor has special capabilities, such as customized styles, editing constraints, reusable content support, a spelling checker, and use of asset pickers to select documents and images to insert into a page’s content. This topic describes how to modify some features and attributes of the HTML Editor field control.

Constraints

If the content type of a page layout supports the Page Content column, you can add a Rich HTML field control to your page layout by using markup such as the following.

XML

<PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField id="ArticleAbstract" FieldName="ArticleAbstract" 
          AllowExternalUrls="false" 
          AllowFonts="true" 
          AllowReusableContent="false" 
          AllowHeadings="false"
          AllowHyperlinks="false"
          AllowImages="false"
          AllowLists="false"
          AllowTables="false"
          AllowTextMarkup="false" 
          AllowHTMLSourceEditing="false"
          DisalbeBasicFormattingButtons="false"
          runat="server"/>

In the example above, RichHTMLField is the name of the field control that provides the richer HTML editing experience. Attributes such as AllowFonts and AllowTables specify restrictions on the field.

The HTML field control allows font tags, but the control does not allow URLs that are external to the current site collection, reusable content stored in a centralized list, standard HTML heading tags, hyperlinks, images, numbered or bulleted lists, tables, or text markup.

Table 1. HTML editor field control properties

Attribute	Description
AllowExternalUrls	Only URLs internal to the current site collection are allowed to be referenced in a link or an image.
AllowFonts	Content may contain Font tags.
AllowHtmlSourceEditing	HTML Editor can be switched into a mode that allows the HTML to be edited directly.
AllowReusableContent	Content may contain reusable content fragments stored in a centralized list.
AllowHeadings	Content may contain HTML heading tags (H1, H2, and so on).
AllowTextMarkup	Content may contain bold, italic, and underlined text.
AllowImages	Content may contain images.
AllowLists	Content may contain numbered or bulleted lists.
AllowTables	Content may contain table-related tags such as <table>, <tr>, and <td>.
AllowHyperlinks	Content may contain links to other URLs.
AllowHtmlSourceEditing	When set to false, the HTML editor is disabled from switching to HTML source editing mode.
AllowHyperlinks	Gets or sets the constraint that allows hyperlinks to be added to the HTML. If this flag is set to false, <A>, <AREA>, and <MAP> tags are removed from the HTML. Default is true. This property also determines whether the editing user interface (UI) enables these operations.
AllowImageFormatting	Gets or sets image formatting items. This restriction disables only menus and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction
AllowImagePositioning	Gets or sets the position of the image. This restriction disables only menus and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowImageStyles	Gets or sets whether the Table Styles menu is enabled. This restriction disables only the menu and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowInsert	Gets or sets whether Insert options are shown. This restriction disables only the menu and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowLists	Gets or sets the constraint that allows list tags to be added to the HTML. If this flag is set to false, <LI>, <OL>, <UL>, <DD>, <DL>, <DT>, and <MENU> tags are removed from the HTML. Default is true. This also determines whether the editing UI enables these operations.
AllowParagraphFormatting	Gets or sets whether paragraph formatting items are enabled. This restriction disables only menus and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowStandardFonts	Gets or sets whether standard fonts are enabled. This restriction disables only menus and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowStyles	Gets or sets whether the Style menu is enabled. This restriction disables only the menu and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowTables	Gets or sets the constraint to allow tables to be added when editing this field.
AllowTableStyles	Gets or sets whether the Table Styles menu is enabled. This restriction disables only the menu and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.
AllowTextMarkup	Get or set the constraint to allow text markup to be added when editing this field.
AllowThemeFonts	Gets or sets whether theme fonts are enabled. This restriction disables only menus and does not force the content to adhere to this restriction.

Predefined Table Formats

The HTML editor includes a set of predefined table formats, but it can be customized to fit the styling of an individual page. Each table format is a collection of cascading style sheet (CSS) classes for each table tag. You can define styling for the first and last row, odd and even rows, first and last column, and so on.

The HTML Editor dynamically applies certain styles from the referenced style sheets on the page and makes them available to users when formatting a table. For a custom style to be available when formatting a table, the relevant class names must follow the PREFIXTableXXX-NNN format, where:

• PREFIX is ms-rte by default, but you can override the default by using the control PrefixStyleSheet() property of the RichHTML field control.
• XXX is the specific table section, such as EvenRow or OddRow.
• NNN is the name to identify the table styling.

The following example presents a complete set of classes for a table styling format.

.ms-rteTable-1 {border-collapse:collapse;border-top:gray 1.5pt;
    border-left:gray 1.5pt;border-bottom:gray 1.5pt;
    border-right:gray 1.5pt;border-style:solid;}
.ms-rteTableHeaderRow-1 {color:Green;background:yellow;text-align:left}
.ms-rteTableHeaderFirstCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableHeaderLastCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableHeaderOddCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableHeaderEvenCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableOddRow-1 {color:black;background:#FFFFDD;}
.ms-rteTableEvenRow-1 {color:black;background:#FFB4B4;}
.ms-rteTableFirstCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableLastCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableOddCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableEvenCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;}
.ms-rteTableFooterRow-1 {color:blue;font-style:bold;
    font-weight:bold;background:white;border-top:solid gray 1.0pt;
    border-bottom:solid gray 1.0pt;border-right:solid silver 1.0pt; 
    border-style:solid;}
.ms-rteTableFooterFirstCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
    border-top:solid gray 1.0pt;text-align:left}
.ms-rteTableFooterLastCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
    border-top:solid gray 1.0pt;text-align:left}
.ms-rteTableFooterOddCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
    text-align:left;border-top:solid gray 1.0pt;}
.ms-rteTableFooterEvenCol-1 {padding:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
    text-align:left;border-top:solid gray 1.0pt;}

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 includes a set of default table styles. However, if the system detects new styles that did not originate in the default .css file, it removes the default set and presents only those newly defined styles in the HTML editor dialog box.

Spelling Checker

In SharePoint Server 2010, the HTML editor includes a spelling checker, which can be customized by developers by using the SpellCheckV4Action Web control and the SpellCheckToolbarButton Web control. The spelling checker action registers client files and data during a spelling check.

It also includes a method to get the console tab and calls the user rights to verify that the current user has rights to perform a spelling check operation on the selected item. The spelling checker action calls the appropriate ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) code, and sends information to the client about available spellings and the default language to use for the request.

FREE Web Part – Random “Quote of the day” SP 2010 Web Part

The “Random Quote of the Day” Web Part randomly selects a quote from the specified Sharepoint list or from the selected RSS feed.

A timer can then be set and the web part will read a new, random post and place it within the web part.

It is great for team/company motivation, to display code snippets in on a Team or KB Site – Your imagination is the limit.

A “Starter” Excel list containing quotes for a quick start is supplied with the download package.

The Web Part can be used with Sharepoint 2010.

You can configure the following web part properties: the Sharepoint list the Sharepoint list column or the RSS Feed URL for external tips enable or suppress the daily calendar display show an optional picture or calendar show a tip every day or on every page refresh configure CSS settings for individual formatting

 

Contact me at tomas.floyd@outlook.com for this cool free web part – Totally free of charge

How To : Use Javascript to enable Listview Folder Navigation

list view webpart is added to page and user navigate to different folders in the list view, there’s no way for users to know current folder hierarchy. So basically breadcrumb for the list view webpart missing. If there would be a way of showing users the exact location in the folder hierarchy the user is current in (as shown in the image below), wouldn’t be that great?

Image 1: Folder Navigation in action

Deploy the FolderNavigation.js File

Download the FolderNavigation.js and then you can deploy the script either in Layouts folder (in case of full trust solutions) or in Master Page gallery (in case of SharePoint Online or full trust). I would recommend to deploy in Master Page Gallery so that even if you move to cloud, it works without modification. If you deploy in Master page gallery, you don’t need to make any changes, but if you deploy in layouts folder, you need to make small changes in the script which is described in section ‘Deploy JS Link file in Layouts folder’.

 

Option 1: Deploy in Master Page Gallery (Suggested)

If you are dealing with SharePoint Online, you don’t have the option to deploy in Layouts folder. In that case you need to deploy it in Master page gallery. Note, deploying the script in other libraries (like site assets, site library) will not work, you need to deploy in master page gallery. Otherwise you can deploy in Layouts folder as described in next section. To deploy in master page gallery manually, please follow the steps:

1. Download the JavaScript file attached.
2. Navigate to Root web => site settings => Master Pages (under group ‘Web Designer Galleries’).
3. From the ‘New Document’ ribbon try adding ’JavaScript Display Template’ and then upload the FolderNavigation.js file and set properties as shown below:
   
   Image 2: Upload the JavaScript file in master page gallery

   In the above image, we’ve specified the content type to ‘JavaScript Display Template’, ‘target control type’ to view to use the js file in list view. Also I’ve set target scope to ‘/’ which means all sites and subsites will be applied. If you have a site collection ‘/sites/HR’, then you need to use ‘/Sites/HR’ instead. You can also use List Template ID, if you need.

 

Option 2: Deploy in Layouts Folder

If you are deploying the FolderNavigation.js file in Layouts folder, you need to make small changes in the downloaded script’s RegisterModuleInti method as shown below:

RegisterModuleInit(‘FolderNavigation.js‘, folderNavigation);

 

In this case the ‘RegisterModuleInit’ first parameter will be the path relative to Layouts folder. If you deploy your file in path ‘/_Layouts/folder1’, the then you need to modify code as shown below:

RegisterModuleInit(‘Folder1/FolderNavigation.js‘, folderNavigation);

 

If you are deploying in other subfolders in Layouts folder, you need to update the path accordingly. What I’ve found till now, you can only deploy in Layouts and Master page gallery. But if you find deploying in other folders works, please share. Basically first paramter in RegisterModuleInti is the file either:

• Relative to ‘_Layouts’ folder
• Or Master page gallery in which case the path is started with ‘/_catalogs/masterpage’

 

Use the FolderNavigation.js in List View WebPart

Once you deploy the JavaScript file in Master page gallery or Layouts folder, you need to use it in List View WebPart. Once you deploy the FolderNavigation.js file, you can start using it in list view webpart. Edit the list view web part properties and then under ‘Miscellaneous’ section put the file url for JS Link as shown below:

Image 3: List View WebPart’s JS Like Propery

 

Few points to note for this JS Link:

• if you have deployed the js file in Master Page Gallery, You can use ~site or ~SiteCollection token, which means current site or current site collection respectively. The URL for JS Link then might be ‘~siteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/FolderNavigatin.js’ or  ‘~site/_catalogs/masterpage/FolderNavigatin.js’. If you deploy the file in Site Collection Master Page gallery only, you need to use ~siteCollection token in subsites so that it uses the JavaScript file from Site Collection.
• If you have deployed in Layouts folder, you need to use corresponding path in the JS Link properties. For example if you are deploying the file in Layouts folder, then use ‘/_layouts/15/FolderNavigation.js’, if you are deploying in ‘Layouts/Folder1’ then, use ‘/_layouts/15/Folder1/FolderNavigation.js’. Just to inform again, if you deploy in Layouts folder, you need to make small changes in the JavaScript file as described under ‘Option 2: Deploy in Layouts Folder’ section.

 

JavaScript file Description

In case you are interested to know how the code works, the code snippet is given below:

JavaScript

function replaceQueryStringAndGet(url, key, value) { 
    var re = new RegExp("([?|&])" + key + "=.*?(&|$)", "i"); 
    separator = url.indexOf('?') !== -1 ? "&" : "?"; 
    if (url.match(re)) { 
        return url.replace(re, '$1' + key + "=" + value + '$2'); 
    } 
    else { 
        return url + separator + key + "=" + value; 
    } 
} 
 
 
function folderNavigation() { 
    function onPostRender(renderCtx) { 
        if (renderCtx.rootFolder) { 
            var listUrl = decodeURIComponent(renderCtx.listUrlDir); 
            var rootFolder = decodeURIComponent(renderCtx.rootFolder); 
            if (renderCtx.rootFolder == '' || rootFolder.toLowerCase() == listUrl.toLowerCase()) 
                return; 
 
            //get the folder path excluding list url. removing list url will give us path relative to current list url 
            var folderPath = rootFolder.toLowerCase().indexOf(listUrl.toLowerCase()) == 0 ? rootFolder.substr(listUrl.length) : rootFolder; 
            var pathArray = folderPath.split('/'); 
            var navigationItems = new Array(); 
            var currentFolderUrl = listUrl; 
 
            var rootNavItem = 
                { 
                    title: 'Root', 
                    url: replaceQueryStringAndGet(document.location.href, 'RootFolder', listUrl) 
                }; 
            navigationItems.push(rootNavItem); 
 
            for (var index = 0; index < pathArray.length; index++) { 
                if (pathArray[index] == '') 
                    continue; 
                var lastItem = index == pathArray.length - 1; 
                currentFolderUrl += '/' + pathArray[index]; 
                var item = 
                    { 
                        title: pathArray[index], 
                        url: lastItem ? '' : replaceQueryStringAndGet(document.location.href, 'RootFolder', encodeURIComponent(currentFolderUrl)) 
                    }; 
                navigationItems.push(item); 
            } 
            RenderItems(renderCtx, navigationItems); 
        } 
    } 
 
 
    //Add a div and then render navigation items inside span 
    function RenderItems(renderCtx, navigationItems) { 
        if (navigationItems.length == 0) return; 
        var folderNavDivId = 'foldernav_' + renderCtx.wpq; 
        var webpartDivId = 'WebPart' + renderCtx.wpq; 
 
 
        //a div is added beneth the header to show folder navigation 
        var folderNavDiv = document.getElementById(folderNavDivId); 
        var webpartDiv = document.getElementById(webpartDivId); 
        if(folderNavDiv!=null){ 
            folderNavDiv.parentNode.removeChild(folderNavDiv); 
            folderNavDiv =null; 
        } 
        if (folderNavDiv == null) { 
            var folderNavDiv = document.createElement('div'); 
            folderNavDiv.setAttribute('id', folderNavDivId) 
            webpartDiv.parentNode.insertBefore(folderNavDiv, webpartDiv); 
            folderNavDiv = document.getElementById(folderNavDivId); 
        } 
 
 
        for (var index = 0; index < navigationItems.length; index++) { 
            if (navigationItems[index].url == '') { 
                var span = document.createElement('span'); 
                span.innerHTML = navigationItems[index].title; 
                folderNavDiv.appendChild(span); 
            } 
            else { 
                var span = document.createElement('span'); 
                var anchor = document.createElement('a'); 
                anchor.setAttribute('href', navigationItems[index].url); 
                anchor.innerHTML = navigationItems[index].title; 
                span.appendChild(anchor); 
                folderNavDiv.appendChild(span); 
            } 
 
            //add arrow (>) to separate navigation items, except the last one 
            if (index != navigationItems.length - 1) { 
                var span = document.createElement('span'); 
                span.innerHTML = '&nbsp;> '; 
                folderNavDiv.appendChild(span); 
            } 
        } 
    } 
 
 
    function _registerTemplate() { 
        var viewContext = {}; 
 
        viewContext.Templates = {}; 
        viewContext.OnPostRender = onPostRender; 
        SPClientTemplates.TemplateManager.RegisterTemplateOverrides(viewContext); 
    } 
    //delay the execution of the script until clienttempltes.js gets loaded 
    ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(_registerTemplate, 'clienttemplates.js'); 
}; 
 
//RegisterModuleInit ensure folderNavigation() function get executed when Minimum Download Strategy is enabled. 
//if you deploy the FolderNavigation.js file in '_layouts' folder use 'FolderNavigation.js' as first paramter. 
//if you deploy the FolderNavigation.js file in '_layouts/folder/subfolder' folder, use 'folder/subfolder/FolderNavigation.js as first parameter' 
//if you are deploying in master page gallery, use '/_catalogs/masterpage/FolderNavigation.js' as first parameter 
RegisterModuleInit('/_catalogs/masterpage/FolderNavigation.js', folderNavigation); 
 
//this function get executed in case when Minimum Download Strategy not enabled. 
folderNavigation(); 

Let me explain the code briefly:

• The method ‘replaceQueryStringAndGet’ is used to replace query string parameter with new value. For example if you have url ‘http://abc.com?key=value&name=sohel’  and you would like to replace the query string ‘key’ with value ‘New Value’, you can use the method like

  replaceQueryStringAndGet(“http://abc.com?key=value&name=sohel&#8221;,“key”,“New Value”)

• The function folderNavigation has three methods. Function ‘onPostRender’ is bound to rendering context’s OnPostRender event. The method first checks if the list view’s root folder is not null  and root folder url is not list url (which means user is browsing list’s/library’s root). Then the method split the render context’s folder path and creates navigation items as shown below:

  var item = { title: title, url: lastItem ? ” : replaceQueryStringAndGet(document.location.href, ‘RootFolder’, encodeURIComponent(rootFolderUrl)) };

  As shown above, in case of last item (which means current folder user browsing), the url is empty as we’ll show a text instead of link for current folder.

• Function ‘RenderItems’ renders the items in the page. I think this is the place of customisation you might be interested. Having all navigation items passed to this function, you can render your navigation items in your own way. renderContext.wpq is unique webpart id in the page. As shown below with the wpq value of ‘WPQ2’ the webpart is rendered in a div with id ‘WebPartWPQ2’.
  

  Image 4: List View WebPart in Firebug

  In ‘RenderItems’ function I’ve added a div just before the webpart div ‘WebPartWPQ2’ to put the folder navigation as shown in the image 1.

• In the method ‘_registerTemplate’, I’ve registered the template and bound the OnPostRender event.
• The final piece is RegisterModuleInit. In some example you will find the function folderNavigation is executed immediately along with the declaration. However, there’s a problem with Client Side Rendering and Minimal Download Strategy (MDS) working together.

• To avoid this problem, we need to Register foldernavigation function with RegisterModuleInit to ensure the script get executed in case of MDS-enabled site. The last line ‘folderNavigation()’ will execute normally in case of MDS-disabled site.

FREE Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

 

 

CRM2011 – SharePoint 2010 Integration? Glue CRM 2011 & Share Point 2010 together? Make CRM 2011 and Share Point 2010 converse? I wasn’t sure what to call this exactly. “Hooking together” works for me!

Now that we have a CRM 2011 instance and a Share Point site working, let’s get them connected up! Go to this website and download Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010:

Accept the License Terms.

Extract the files to a folder (I chose C:\CRM List).

You will get a prompt “The Installation is complete.” Click OK.

Let’s go over to the Share Point Central Administration Server to install the list component we just extracted. Connect to http://localhost:48835/ (your port might be different, be aware of this). Click Manage web applications.

Click the new Share Point site, and then “General Settings” (the blue cogs).

Scroll down to Browser File Handling and choose Permissive, Click OK.

Let’s head back over to our new Share Point Site. Click Site Actions up top left, and then “Site Settings”.

Under Galleries click “Solutions”.

Click the Word “Solutions” up top (you have to click the word “Solutions”, even though it looks selected), and then click “Upload Solution”.

Select the .wsp component that we extracted wayyy back at the top of this. I used C:CRM List as my extract folder. Click OK.

You’ll get prompted at this point, I couldn’t active the control on this screen (but it still needs to be done). We need to make sure some services are running to activate the solution. Click Close.

Head back to the Share Point Central Administration. http://localhost:48835. Found at

Click System Settings –> Manage Services on this server

Click Start beside “Share Point Foundation Sandboxed Code Service”. I also started “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service (by accident)” so that’s why that ones started.

Now to head back to our Share Point site http://localhost:39083/

Under Galleries click “Solutions”.

Click Solutions again, select crmlistcomponent, and the click “Activate” up top. Activate is now un-greyed out! Click Activate!

The solution has now been activated! Hurray!

There seems to be some confusion whether or not you need to run a power shell script to enable Activation of Share Point 2010 solutions (AllowHtcExtn). According to what I’ve read, you would need to run this if Share Point 2010 is running on a domain controller. I didn’t have to do this (and we’re on a domain controller), and I’ve yet to run into a problem with .htc stuff. Even in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Readme it says:
“If you are using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (On-Premises), you must add .htc extensions to the list of allowed file types:
a. Copy the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 script file to the server that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
b. In the Windows PowerShell window or in the SharePoint Management Console, run the command: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 .
Example: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 http://servername%E2%80%9D

Some people say the script works for them , and some say that using just the blog method (what we did) works
The sharepoint configuration is complete at this point. You probably want to take a snapshot, name it “After Sharepoint Configuration”. Let’s head over to our CRM server (localhost:85).

In CRM Click Settings –> Document Management –> Document Management Settings

Select the entities that you want to have documents enabled on. This will create a “Documents” area when you open an instance of the entity. I’ll just leave the defaults for now. At the bottom punch in your Share Point site that you’ve created and click Next. This is the Share Point server we installed the list component on. You’re not allowed to use localhost:port, just use the computer name:port like below.

Don’t select the box, otherwise it will relate the files to those entities. Without checking the box you will end up with something like Site/EntityName/Record Name (which is what I want, especially if you’re using custom entities). Click Next.

If “Libraries are being created in the path”, click Next.

Everything should “Succeed”, Click Finish.

Let’s test this bad boy out now.

Create a new account called “Test”.

Click Save! Click “Documents” on the left side. You’ll get a prompt saying that the folder (Test) is being created under “Account”. Click OK.

Click Add.

Now you’ll probably get these errors! /crmgrid/scripts/DialogContainer.js and 403 FORBIDDEN! Depressing. The only real information on this error was here: . It wasn’t very clear, but I stumbled through it. It seems that CRM 2011 doesn’t enjoy being called localhost. Let’s fix these up.

The fix for this was to run inetmgr –> Click Microsoft Dynamics CRM –> click Stop

Click “Bindings…” on the right side. Click “Edit” on the items that show “localhost” and change it to my machine name: “win-b80icqrvluf”. This is so it has a a “real” name to connect to.

Before:

After:

Now click “Start” on the right side.

Head back over to the CRM (http://win-b80icqrvluf:85/CRMTest/main.aspx) make sure to use the host name, as it might give you the error if you use localhost. Open your Test Account again.

Click Documents –> Add, you should now see this popup (it can take a while to load for the first time on the VM). If you continue to get the error, stop both CRM 2011 and Share Point 2010 servers and restart them. If that doesn’t work, try restarting the whole server.

Pick a file, and click OK.

The file should be uploaded to Share Point now.

Head over to Share Point at http://win-b80icqrvluf:39083 and click “All Site Content” or “Libraries”.

Click Account.

You can see that CRM has created a folder “Test” (for our record). It creates 1 folder per record. Click it to see the files associated to that record!!

The files associated to the record “Test” in Accounts.

Share Point and CRM have combined into a super awesome force of doom. But we’re still missing 1 core piece of functionality (due to not picking a port when we installed CRM).

 

 

Select Master Page App for SharePoint 2013 now available!! (Get the SharePoint 2010 Select Master Page Web Part Free)

In Publishing sites, there will be a layouts or application page through which we can set a custom
or another master page as a default master page. Unfortunately, this is missing in Team Sites.

This is what this solution is all about. It is targeted mainly for Team sites, since publishing sites already have a provision.

It adds a custom ribbon button in the Share and Track group of the Files group of Master Page Gallery. This is a SharePoint 2013 Hosted App. Refer the documentation for the technical details.

 

The following screen shots depict the functionality.

 

The custom ribbon button will not be enabled if a folder is selected or more than 1 item is selected.
But if a file is selected, the button will be enabled, irrespective of the file extension. Upon selecting a file and clicking on the ribbon button, a pop up dialog will appear with the text “Working on it..”.

Then a confirmation alert will appear, asking “Are you sure?”. Once confirmed by the user, a progress message will be displayed in the pop up dialog. If the file selected is not of .master extension, then the user will be displayed an alert “This will work only for master pages.”.

If a master page, which is already set as default, is selected and the ribbon button is clicked, the user will be displayed an alert “The file at <url> is the current default master page. So please select another master page.”. If another master page is selected, then the user will be displayed an alert “Master Page Changed Successfully.

Please press CTRL + F5 for changes to reflect.”. Once the user clicks OK on the alert, the pop up dialog also closes and pressing CTRL + F5 will reflect the updated master page. Any time, the user clicks OK or cancel on the alert screens, the parent screen will be refreshed and the current selection will be cleared.

The app requires a Full Control on the host web, since this is required for setting the master page and thats precisely the reason why, I couldn’t publish this in the Office store.

The app has been tested on IE9 and the latest version of Chrome and Firefox. It may not work on IE8 or lower version of other browsers also, in case they don’t support HTML5. Also, the app currently supports only English. Also, the app will set the default master only on the host web (where the app is installed) and not on the sub webs.

The app uses jQuery AJAX and REST APIs of SharePoint 2013.

To use the app, just upload the app (.app file) to the App Catalog and add/install it to the host team site and trust it and navigate to the Master Page Gallery and you are good to go.

 

With this App, you will also receive the FREE SharePoint 2010 Select Master Page Web Part!!

It adds a custom ribbon button in the Share and Track group of the Documents group of Master Page Gallery.

It is a Sandbox solution and it is implemented to set the master of only the root site of a site collection, though it can be customized / extended for sub sites. It requires a user to be at least a Site owner to avoid unnecessary manipulation of master page by contributors or other users. Refer the documentation for the technical details.

The following screen shots depict the functionality.

 

 

Introduction to the Unified Logging Service and Creating a Javascript Logging System

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation exposes a rich logging mechanism known as the Unified Logging Service (ULS) that enables developers to write useful information helping them to identify and troubleshoot issues during the application lifecycle. The ULS writes SharePoint Foundation events to the SharePoint Trace Log, and stores them in the file system, typically inside the SharePoint root folder in files named \14\LOGS\SERVER–YYYmmDD–ID.log.

ULS exposes a rich managed object model enabling developers to specify their own configurations such as categories and severity while writing exceptions or trace message to the ULS logs. You can find more details on the managed API in the article Writing to the Trace Log from Custom Code.

With the evolution of a rich client object model in SharePoint 2010 that enables developers to build complex client applications, it is very important to write useful information that is not visible in the user interface but is recorded on the server so it can be monitored by administrators and developers.

To address these scenarios for applications running in thin-client browsers, SharePoint Foundation provides a web service named SharePoint Diagnostics (diagnostics.asmx). This web service enables a client application to submit diagnostic reports directly to the ULS logs.

This article focuses on how you can leverage the SharePoint Diagnostics web service to write trace messages from a custom JavaScript application into the ULS logs.

The following points are discussed:

• Overview of the SendClientScriptErrorReport web method
• Creating a simple JavaScript application to log trace messages by using SharePoint Diagnostics web service
• Setting up the required configurations for enabling logging via the Diagnostics web service
• Using the application
• Using the ULS logging script with sandboxed solutions

Overview of the SendClientScriptErrorReport Web Method

The Diagnostics web service exposes a single method named SendClientScriptErrorReport that enables client applications to report errors to the ULS service. The following table summarizes the parameter list required by the SendClientScriptErrorReport method.

Parameter Name	Description	Value Examples
Message	A string containing the message to display to the client	The value of the displaypage property is null or undefined; not a function object.
File	The URL file name associated with the current error	customscript.js
Line	A string containing the line of code from which the error is being generated	9
Client	A string containing the client name that is experiencing the error	<client><browser name=’Internet Explorer’ version=’9.0′></browser><language> en-us </language></client>
Stack	A string containing the call-stack information from the generated error	<stack><function depth=’0′ signature=’ myFunction() ‘>function myFunction() { ‘displaypage ();}</function></stack>
Team	A string containing a team or product name	Custom SharePoint Application
originalFile	The physical file name associated with the current error	customscript.js

In the table, notice that the example values for Client and Stack depict a XML fragments, not single lines of text. This information is stated in the protocol specification documented in 3.1.4.1.2.1 SendClientScriptErrorReport. Even though the protocol specification for these parameters requires a valid XML fragment, the web-service call to this method still succeeds even if the values supplied for these parameters do not follow this schema, despite the fact that creating the client and stack in this way would add more information to the trace.

The parameter list in the table shows that, unlike the managed API, the SendClientScriptErrorReport web method does not provide any option to specify the category or severity of the message being logged. Also looking at the method name and description, it appears that the exception logged should specify the severity level as Error. However, any message logged through the SharePoint Diagnostics web service is always displayed under the category Unified Logging Service and has a trace log severity level set to Verbose.

Later in this article, you will see the steps required to view the traces written through the SharePoint Diagnostics web service.

Creating a Simple JavaScript Application to Log Trace Messages

In this section, you create a JavaScript application that uses the Diagnostics web service to report errors to the ULS. The application contains a JavaScript file named ULSLogScript.js that contains the necessary functions to communicate and log traces to the Diagnostics web service. These functions are then called directly from any consumer script.

Note
This is a relatively simple application with just one file, so you are not creating a formal SharePoint solution; instead, you save the files directly to the Layouts directory in the SharePoint hive structure.

To create a JavaScript library containing the ULS logging logic

1. Start Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
2. From the File menu, create a new JScript file and save it in the following path: <SharePoint Installation Folder>\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\LoggingSample\ULSLogScript.js.

   For example, C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\LoggingSample\ULSLogScript.js.

   Note
   You need to create a new directory named LoggingSample in the Layouts folder.

3. Because you are using the JQuery library in the application, download the jquery-1.6.4.min.js file from the JQuery portal and add it to the LoggingSample folder created previously.
4. Type or paste the following code into the ULSLogScript.js file.
   JavaScript

   // Creates a custom ulslog object 
   // with the required properties.
   function ulsObject() {
       this.message = null;
       this.file = null;
       this.line = null;
       this.client = null;
       this.stack = null;
       this.team = null;
       this.originalFile = null;
   }
   

   The ulsObject function returns a new instance of a custom object with properties mapped to the parameters required by the SendClientScriptErrorReport method. This object is used throughout the script for performing various operations.

5. Define the methods that populate the property values specified in the ulsObject method. Begin by defining the function that retrieves the client property. Following the ulsObject method, type or paste the following code.
   JavaScript

   // Detecting the browser to create the client information
   // in the required format.
   function getClientInfo() {
       var browserName = '';
   
       if (jQuery.browser.msie)
           browserName = "Internet Explorer";
       else if (jQuery.browser.mozilla)
           browserName = "Firefox";
       else if (jQuery.browser.safari)
           browserName = "Safari";
       else if (jQuery.browser.opera)
           browserName = "Opera";
       else
           browserName = "Unknown";
   
       var browserVersion = jQuery.browser.version;
       var browserLanguage = navigator.language;
       if (browserLanguage == undefined) {
           browserLanguage = navigator.userLanguage;
       }
   
       var client = "<client><browser name='{0}' version='{1}'></browser><language>{2}</language></client>";
       client = String.format(client, browserName, browserVersion, browserLanguage);
    
       return client;
   }
   
   // Utility function to assist string formatting.
   String.format = function () {
       var s = arguments[0];
       for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length - 1; i++) {
           var reg = new RegExp("\\{" + i + "\\}", "gm");
           s = s.replace(reg, arguments[i + 1]);
       }
   
       return s;
   }
   

   The getClientInfo function uses the JQuery library to detect the current browser properties, such as the name and version, and then creates a XML fragment (as discussed previously) describing the browser details where the application is currently running. Additionally, a utility function named String.format assists string formatting through the code.

6. Next, you need a function to create the call stack for the exception raised in the script. Add the following functions to the ULSLogScript.js code.
   JavaScript

   // Creates the callstack in the required format 
   // using the caller function definition.
   function getCallStack(functionDef, depth) {
       if (functionDef != null) {
           var signature = '';
           functionDef = functionDef.toString();
           signature = functionDef.substring(0, functionDef.indexOf("{"));
           if (signature.indexOf("function") == 0) {
               signature = signature.substring(8);
           }
   
           if (depth == 0) {
               var stack = "<stack><function depth='0' signature='{0}'>{1}</function></stack>";
               stack = String.format(stack, signature, functionDef);
           }
           else {
               var stack = "<stack><function depth='1' signature='{0}'></function></stack>";
               stack = String.format(stack, signature);
           }
   
           return stack;
       }
   
       return "";
   }
   

   The getCallStack function receives the function definition where the exception occurred and a depth as a parameter. The depth parameter is used by the function to decide if only the caller function signature is required or the complete function definition is to be included. Based on the caller function definition, the getCallStack function extracts the required information such as the signature, body, and creates an XML fragment as described in the protocol specification.

7. Next, create a function that creates a SOAP packet in the format expected by the Diagnostics web service SendClientScriptErrorReport method. Type or paste the following functions in the ULSLogScript.js file.
   JavaScript

   // Creates the SOAP packet required by SendClientScriptErrorReport
   // web method.
   function generateErrorPacket(ulsObj) {
       var soapPacket = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>" +
                           "<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" " +
                                          "xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\" "+
                                          "xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\">" +
                             "<soap:Body>" +
                               "<SendClientScriptErrorReport " +
                                 "xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/diagnostics/\">" +
                                 "<message>{0}</message>" +
                                 "<file>{1}</file>" +
                                 "<line>{2}</line>" +
                                 "<stack>{3}</stack>" +
                                 "<client>{4}</client>" +
                                 "<team>{5}</team>" +
                                 "<originalFile>{6}</originalFile>" +
                               "</SendClientScriptErrorReport>" +
                             "</soap:Body>" +
                           "</soap:Envelope>";
    
       soapPacket = String.format(soapPacket, encodeXmlString(ulsObj.message), encodeXmlString(ulsObj.file), 
                    ulsObj.line, encodeXmlString(ulsObj.stack), encodeXmlString(ulsObj.client), 
                    encodeXmlString(ulsObj.team), encodeXmlString(ulsObj.originalFile));
    
       return soapPacket;
   }
   
   // Utility function to encode special characters in XML.
   function encodeXmlString(txt) {
       txt = String(txt);
       txt = jQuery.trim(txt);
       txt = txt.replace(/&/g, "&amp;");
       txt = txt.replace(/</g, "&lt;");
       txt = txt.replace(/>/g, "&gt;");
       txt = txt.replace(/'/g, "&apos;");
       txt = txt.replace(/"/g, "&quot;");
    
       return txt;
   }
   

   The generateErrorPacket function receives an instance of the ulsObj object and returns the SOAP packet for the SendClientScriptErrorReport function as a string in the expected format. Because the values for the some parameters are expected as an XML fragment, the encodeXmlString function is used to encode the special characters.

8. When the SOAP packet has been defined, you need a function to issue an asynchronous request to the Diagnostics web service. Add the code below to the ULSLogScript.js file.
   // Function to form the Diagnostics service URL.
   function getWebSvcUrl() {
       var serverurl = location.href;
       if (serverurl.indexOf("?") != -1) {
           serverurl = serverurl.replace(location.search, '');
       }
    
       var index = serverurl.lastIndexOf("/");
       serverurl = serverurl.substring(0, index - 1);
       serverurl = serverurl.concat('/_vti_bin/diagnostics.asmx');
    
       return serverurl;
   }
   
   // Method to post the SOAP packet to the Diagnostic web service.
   function postMessageToULSSvc(soapPacket) {
       $(document).ready(function () {
           $.ajax({
               url: getWebSvcUrl(),
               type: "POST",
               dataType: "xml",
               data: soapPacket, //soap packet.
               contentType: "text/xml; charset=\"utf-8\"",
               success: handleResponse, // Invoke when the web service call is successful.
               error: handleError// Invoke when the web service call fails.
           });
       });
   }
   
   // Invoked when the web service call succeeds.
   function handleResponse(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
       // Custom code...
       alert('Successfully logged trace to ULS');
    }
    
   // Invoked when the web service call fails.
   function handleError(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
       //Custom code...
           alert('Error occurred in executing the web request');
   }
   

   The postMessageToULSSvc function perform an asynchronous HTTP request and posts the SOAP packet to the Diagnostics web service. The URL of the Diagnostics web service is dynamically constructed in the getWebSvcUrl function. The postMessageToULSSvc function also defines respective handlers for success or error responses. Instead of displaying alerts on the handlers, other logic can be written as required by the application.

9. Finally, you need a function that is invoked automatically when an error occurs in the code. To register this function globally for all the JavaScript functions on the page, you attach this function to the window.onerror event. Add the following lines of code as the first line of the ULSLogScript.js file.
   JavaScript

   // Registering the ULS logging function on a global level.
   window.onerror = logErrorToULS;
   
   // Set default value for teamName.
   var teamName = "Custom SharePoint Application";
   
   // Further add the logErrorToULS method at the end of the script.
   
   // Function to log messages to Diagnostic web service.
   // Invoked by the window.onerror message.
   function logErrorToULS(msg, url, linenumber) {
       var ulsObj = new ulsObject();
       ulsObj.message = "Error occurred: " + msg;
       ulsObj.file = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf("/") + 1); // Get the current file name.
       ulsObj.line = linenumber;
       ulsObj.stack = getCallStack(logErrorToULS.caller); // Create error call stack.
       ulsObj.client = getClientInfo(); // Create client information.
       ulsObj.team = teamName; // Declared in the consumer script.
       ulsObj.originalFile = ulsObj.file;
   
       var soapPacket = generateErrorPacket(ulsObj); // Create the soap packet.
       postMessageToULSSvc(soapPacket); // Post to the web service.
   
       return true;
   }
   

   The line window.onerror = logErrorToULS links the function logErrorToULS with the window.onerror event. This enables you to capture the required information such as the error message, line number, and error file. The teamName variable enables you to set a unique value with respect to the calling application. This can be overridden in the consumer scripts. The logErrorToULS function creates an instance of the ulsObj object and populates all of its properties. Here, you see that the stack property of the ulsObj object is set to logErrorToULS.caller. This provides the function definition of the method that invoked this function. The postMessageToULSSvc function is called to write the error information to the trace logs.

   Note
   Because you cannot specify the security level of the trace message in the SendClientScriptErrorReport method, the message property of the ulsObj object is prepended with text indicating that the message logged is part of an exception.

10. The logErrorToULS function is called automatically when an error occurs on the page, but to intentionally write a trace message to the ULS, you need one more function which can be called specifically. Add the following function just below the logErrorToULS function.
    JavaScript

    // Function to log message to Diagnostic web service.
    // Specifically invoked by a consumer method.
    function logMessageToULS(message, fileName) {
        if (message != null) {
            var ulsObj = new ulsObject();
            ulsObj.message = message;
            ulsObj.file = fileName;
            ulsObj.line = 0; // We don't know the line, so we set it to zero.
            ulsObj.stack = getCallStack(logMessageToULS.caller);
            ulsObj.client = getClientInfo();
            ulsObj.team = teamName;
            ulsObj.originalFile = ulsObj.file;
    
            var soapPacket = generateErrorPacket(ulsObj);
            postMessageToULSSvc(soapPacket);
        }
    }
    

    Unlike the logErrorToULS function, the logMessageToULS function accepts the message to be logged and the file name where the error occurred as parameters.

So far, you have created the required logic to write trace messages or exceptions to the ULS logs. Now you need to write a function that consumes the logErrorToULS or logMessageToULS functions.

To create the consumer application

1. Navigate to your SharePoint site.
2. Create a new Web Parts page.
3. Add a Content Editor Web Part in any of the available Web Part zones.
4. Edit the Web Part and type or paste the following text in the HTML source.
   HTML

   <script src="/_layouts/LoggingSample/jquery-1.6.4.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="/_layouts/LoggingSample/ULSLogScript.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
           var teamName = "Simple ULS Logging";
           function doWork() {
               unknownFunction();
           }
           function logMessage() {
               logMessageToULS('This is a trace message from CEWP', 'loggingsample.aspx');
           }
    </script>
   
   <input type="button" value="Log Exception" onclick="doWork();" />
       <br /><br />
     <input type="button" value="Log Trace" onclick="logMessage();" />
   
   

   This HTML code contains the required script references to include the JQuery library and the ULSLogScript.js file that you created in the previous section. It also contains two inline JavaScript functions and the respective input buttons to invoke them.

   To demonstrate exception handling, the doWork function makes a call to an unknownFunction function that does not exist. This invokes an exception that is intercepted and logged by the ULSLogScript.js code. To demonstrate message logging, the logMessage function calls the logMessageToULS function to write trace messages to ULS.

5. Exit the web page design mode.
6. Save the Web Parts page.

Configuring the Diagnostic Logging Service to Enabling Logging

Finally, you need to configure the Diagnostic Logging Service in SharePoint Central Administration to ensure that the traces and exceptions logged from the Diagnostics web service are visible in the ULS logs.

To configure the Diagnostic Logging Service

1. Open SharePoint Central Administration.
2. From the Quick Launch, click Monitoring.
   Figure 1. Click the Monitoring option

   

3. On the monitoring page, in the Reporting section, click Configure diagnostic logging.
   Figure 2. Click Configure diagnostic logging

   

4. From all categories, expand the SharePoint Foundation category.
   Figure 3. Expand the SharePoint Foundation category

   

5. Select the Unified Logging Service category.
   Figure 4. Select Unified Logging Service

   

6. In the Least critical event to report to the trace log list, select Verbose.
   Figure 5. In the dropdown list, select Verbose

   

7. Click OK to save the configuration.

The server is now ready to log traces sent by the Diagnostics web service to ULS. These traces appear under the category Unified Logging Service with a severity set to Verbose.

Using the Application

In this section, you test the application by raising an alert that is logged to the ULS.

To test the logging application

1. Click the Log Exception button inside the Content Editor Web Part (CEWP).
   Figure 6. Click the Log Exception button

   

2. An alert indicates that the message has been logged successfully to ULS.
   Figure 7. Confirmation message

   

3. To see the exception details in the ULS logs, navigate to the Logs folder in the SharePoint hive ({SP Installation Path}\14\LOGS\)
4. Because multiple log files can be present in the Logs folder, perform a descending sort on the Date modified field.
5. Open the recent log file in a text editor such as Notepad and then search for Simple ULS Logging (the team name specified previously). Now you should see all the web service parameters as supplied from the client application, from Message to OriginalFileName, in the following text:

   10/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a084Verbose Message: Error occured: The value of the property ‘unknownFunction’ is null or undefined, not a Function object543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a085Verbose File: ULS%20Logging%20Sample.aspx543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a086Verbose Line: 676543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a087Verbose Client: <client><browser name=’Internet Explorer’ version=’8.0′></browser><language>en-us</language></client>543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a088Verbose Stack: <stack><function depth=’0′ signature=’ doWork() ‘>function doWork() { unknownFunction(); }</function></stack>543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a089Verbose TeamName: Simple ULS Logging543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd510/14/2011 21:00:37.87 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x14DCSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a08aVerbose OriginalFileName: ULS%20Logging%20Sample.aspx543a6672-9078-452f-93bd-545c4babefd5

   Looking at the log message, you can easily determine that the exception occurred because unknownFunction was not defined, along with other relevant details such as the line number.

6. Similarly, clicking Log Trace on the CEWP writes the following trace message:

   10/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a084Verbose Message: This is a trace message from CEWP8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a085Verbose File: loggingsample.aspx8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a086Verbose Line: 08c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a087Verbose Client: <client><browser name=’Internet Explorer’ version=’8.0′></browser><language>en-us</language></client>8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a088Verbose Stack: <stack><function depth=’1′ signature=’ logMessage() ‘></function></stack>8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a089Verbose TeamName: Simple ULS Logging8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f15210/14/2011 21:29:55.76 w3wp.exe (0x097C) 0x0F6CSharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service a08aVerbose OriginalFileName: loggingsample.aspx8c182889-c323-46f3-a287-a538c379f152

   In this log, you see that a trace message was sent by the logMessage function.

Using the ULS Logging Script with Sandboxed Solutions

In a sandboxed solution, you cannot deploy any file to the server file system (the Layouts folder), so to make the ULS logging script work, you need to make the following two changes:

1. Provision the jquery-1.6.4.min.js and ULSLogScript.js file to a Site Collection–relative Styles Library folder (or any other library with appropriate read access).
2. Update the script references in the consumer Content Query Web Part (CQWP), as needed.

The remaining functionality should work as is.

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Architecture and Practical Application – BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite

Architecture for BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite

The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite implements a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) custom binding, which contains a single custom transport binding element that enables communication with an SAP system.

The SAP adapter is wrapped by the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK runtime and is exposed to applications through the WCF channel architecture. The SAP adapter communicates with the SAP system through either the 64-bit or 32-bit version of the SAP Unicode RFC SDK (librfc32u.dll).

The following figure shows the end-to-end architecture for solutions that are developed by using the SAP adapter.
SAP End-to-End Architecture
Consuming the Adapter

The SAP adapter exposes the SAP system as a WCF service to client applications. Client applications exchange SOAP messages with the SAP adapter through WCF channels to perform operations and to access data on the SAP system. The preceding figure shows four ways in which the SAP adapter can be consumed.

• Through a WCF channel application that performs operations on the SAP system by using the WCF channel model to exchange SOAP messages directly with the SAP adapter. For more information about developing solutions for the SAP adapter by using WCF channel model programming, see Developing Applications by Using the WCF Channel Model.

• Through a WCF service model application that calls methods on a WCF client to perform operations on the SAP system. A WCF client models the operations exposed by the SAP adapter as .NET methods. You can use the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK or the svcutil.exe tool to create a WCF client class from metadata exposed by the SAP adapter. For more information about WCF service model programming and the SAP adapter, see Developing Applications by Using the WCF Service Model.

• Through a BizTalk port that is configured to use the BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter with the SAP Binding configured as the binding for the WCF-Custom transport type in a BizTalk Server application. The BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter enables communication between a BizTalk Server application and a WCF service.

The BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter supports custom WCF bindings through its WCF-Custom transport type, which enables you to configure any WCF binding exposed to the configuration system as the binding used by the BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter. For more information about how to use the SAP adapter in BizTalk Server solutions, see Developing BizTalk Applications. BizTalk transactions are supported by the BizTalk Layered Channel binding element which can be loaded by setting a binding property on the SAP Binding.

• Through an IIS-hosted Web service. In this scenario, the SAP adapter is exposed through a WCF Service proxy, which is hosted in IIS by using one of the standard WCF HTTP bindings.

• Through the .NET Framework Data Provider for mySAP Business Suite. The Data Provider for SAP runs on top of the SAP adapter and provides an ADO.NET interface to an SAP system.

The SAP adapter and the SAP RFC library are always hosted in-process with the application or service that consumes the adapter.

The SAP Adapter and WCF

WCF presents a programming model based on the exchange of SOAP messages over channels between clients and services. These messages are sent between endpoints exposed by a communicating client and service.

An endpoint consists of an endpoint address which specifies the location at which messages are received, a binding which specifies the communication protocols used to exchange messages, and a contract which specifies the operations and data types exposed by the endpoint.

A binding consists of one or more binding elements that stack on top of each other to define how messages are exchanged with the endpoint.

 

At a minimum, a binding must specify the transport and encoding used to exchange messages with the endpoint. Message exchange between endpoints occurs over a channel stack that is composed of one or more channels. Each channel is a concrete implementation of one of the binding elements in the binding configured for the endpoint.

For more information about WCF and the WCF programming model, see “Windows Communication Foundation” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=89726.

The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite exposes a WCF custom binding, the SAP Binding (Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPBinding). By default, this binding contains a single custom transport binding element, the SAP Adapter Binding Element (Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPAdapter), which enables operations on an SAP system. When using the SAP adapter with BizTalk Server, you can set the EnableBizTalkCompatibilityMode binding property to load a custom binding element, the BizTalk Layered Channel Binding Element, on top of the SAP Adapter Binding Element. The BizTalk Layered Channel Binding Element is implemented internally by the SAP adapter and is not exposed outside the SAP Binding.

Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPBinding (the SAP Binding) and Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPAdapter (the SAP Adapter Binding Element) are public classes and are also exposed to the configuration system. Because the SAP Adapter Binding Element is exposed publicly, you can build your own custom WCF bindings capable of extending the functionality of the SAP adapter. For example, you could implement a custom binding to support Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) in a WCF channel or a WCF service model programming solution, to aggregate database operations into a single multifunction operation, or to perform schema transformation between operations implemented by a custom application and operations on the SAP system.

The SAP adapter is built on top of the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK and runs on top of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime. The WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides a software framework and tooling infrastructure that the SAP adapter leverages to provide a rich set of features to users and adapter clients.

The Connection to the SAP System

The SAP adapter connects with the SAP system through the SAP Unicode RFC SDK Library (librfc32u.dll). The SAP adapter supports both the 32 bit and the 64 bit versions of the SAP RFC SDK. The SAP RFC SDK enables external programs to call ABAP functions on a SAP system.

You establish a connection to an SAP system by providing a connection URI to the SAP adapter. The SAP adapter supports the following kinds of connections to an SAP system:
• An application host–based connection (A), in which the SAP adapter connects directly to an SAP application server.

• A load balancing connection (B), in which the SAP adapter connects to an SAP messaging server.

• A destination-based connection (D), in which the connection to the SAP system is specified by a destination in the saprfc.ini configuration file. A, B, and R type connections are supported.

• A listener connection (R), in which the adapter receives RFCs, tRFC and IDOCs through an RFC Destination on the SAP system that is specified by a listener host, a listener gateway service, and a listener program ID, either directly in the connection URI or by an R-based destination in the saprfc.ini configuration file.

Architecture for BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite

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The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite implements a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) custom binding, which contains a single custom transport binding element that enables communication with an SAP system. The SAP adapter is wrapped by the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK runtime and is exposed to applications through the WCF channel architecture. The SAP adapter communicates with the SAP system through either the 64-bit or 32-bit version of the SAP Unicode RFC SDK (librfc32u.dll). The following figure shows the end-to-end architecture for solutions that are developed by using the SAP adapter.
SAP End-to-End Architecture
Consuming the Adapter

The SAP adapter exposes the SAP system as a WCF service to client applications. Client applications exchange SOAP messages with the SAP adapter through WCF channels to perform operations and to access data on the SAP system. The preceding figure shows four ways in which the SAP adapter can be consumed.
• Through a WCF channel application that performs operations on the SAP system by using the WCF channel model to exchange SOAP messages directly with the SAP adapter. For more information about developing solutions for the SAP adapter by using WCF channel model programming, see Developing Applications by Using the WCF Channel Model.

• Through a WCF service model application that calls methods on a WCF client to perform operations on the SAP system. A WCF client models the operations exposed by the SAP adapter as .NET methods. You can use the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK or the svcutil.exe tool to create a WCF client class from metadata exposed by the SAP adapter. For more information about WCF service model programming and the SAP adapter, see Developing Applications by Using the WCF Service Model.

• Through a BizTalk port that is configured to use the BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter with the SAP Binding configured as the binding for the WCF-Custom transport type in a BizTalk Server application. The BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter enables communication between a BizTalk Server application and a WCF service.

The BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter supports custom WCF bindings through its WCF-Custom transport type, which enables you to configure any WCF binding exposed to the configuration system as the binding used by the BizTalk WCF-Custom adapter. For more information about how to use the SAP adapter in BizTalk Server solutions, see Developing BizTalk Applications.

BizTalk transactions are supported by the BizTalk Layered Channel binding element which can be loaded by setting a binding property on the SAP Binding.

• Through an IIS-hosted Web service. In this scenario, the SAP adapter is exposed through a WCF Service proxy, which is hosted in IIS by using one of the standard WCF HTTP bindings.

• Through the .NET Framework Data Provider for mySAP Business Suite. The Data Provider for SAP runs on top of the SAP adapter and provides an ADO.NET interface to an SAP system.

The SAP adapter and the SAP RFC library are always hosted in-process with the application or service that consumes the adapter.

The SAP Adapter and WCF

WCF presents a programming model based on the exchange of SOAP messages over channels between clients and services. These messages are sent between endpoints exposed by a communicating client and service.

An endpoint consists of an endpoint address which specifies the location at which messages are received, a binding which specifies the communication protocols used to exchange messages, and a contract which specifies the operations and data types exposed by the endpoint. A binding consists of one or more binding elements that stack on top of each other to define how messages are exchanged with the endpoint.

At a minimum, a binding must specify the transport and encoding used to exchange messages with the endpoint. Message exchange between endpoints occurs over a channel stack that is composed of one or more channels. Each channel is a concrete implementation of one of the binding elements in the binding configured for the endpoint.

For more information about WCF and the WCF programming model, see “Windows Communication Foundation” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=89726.

The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite exposes a WCF custom binding, the SAP Binding (Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPBinding). By default, this binding contains a single custom transport binding element, the SAP Adapter Binding Element (Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPAdapter), which enables operations on an SAP system. When using the SAP adapter with BizTalk Server, you can set the EnableBizTalkCompatibilityMode binding property to load a custom binding element, the BizTalk Layered Channel Binding Element, on top of the SAP Adapter Binding Element. The BizTalk Layered Channel Binding Element is implemented internally by the SAP adapter and is not exposed outside the SAP Binding.

Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPBinding (the SAP Binding) and Microsoft.Adapters.SAP.SAPAdapter (the SAP Adapter Binding Element) are public classes and are also exposed to the configuration system. Because the SAP Adapter Binding Element is exposed publicly, you can build your own custom WCF bindings capable of extending the functionality of the SAP adapter. For example, you could implement a custom binding to support Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) in a WCF channel or a WCF service model programming solution, to aggregate database operations into a single multifunction operation, or to perform schema transformation between operations implemented by a custom application and operations on the SAP system.

The SAP adapter is built on top of the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK and runs on top of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime. The WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides a software framework and tooling infrastructure that the SAP adapter leverages to provide a rich set of features to users and adapter clients.

The Connection to the SAP System

The SAP adapter connects with the SAP system through the SAP Unicode RFC SDK Library (librfc32u.dll). The SAP adapter supports both the 32 bit and the 64 bit versions of the SAP RFC SDK. The SAP RFC SDK enables external programs to call ABAP functions on a SAP system.

You establish a connection to an SAP system by providing a connection URI to the SAP adapter. The SAP adapter supports the following kinds of connections to an SAP system:
• An application host–based connection (A), in which the SAP adapter connects directly to an SAP application server.

• A load balancing connection (B), in which the SAP adapter connects to an SAP messaging server.

• A destination-based connection (D), in which the connection to the SAP system is specified by a destination in the saprfc.ini configuration file. A, B, and R type connections are supported.

• A listener connection (R), in which the adapter receives RFCs, tRFC and IDOCs through an RFC Destination on the SAP system that is specified by a listener host, a listener gateway service, and a listener program ID, either directly in the connection URI or by an R-based destination in the saprfc.ini configuration file.

So – How Do I Use a Custom Web Part?

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This section provides information about using a custom Web Part with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. To use a custom Web Part, you must do the following:
1. Create a custom Web Part

1. Deploy the custom Web Part to a SharePoint portal

2. Configure the SharePoint portal to use the custom Web Part

Before You Begin

Before you create a custom Web Part:
• Publish the SAP artifacts as a WCF service. For more information, see Step 1: Publish the SAP Artifacts as a WCF Service in Tutorial 1: Presenting Data from an SAP System on a SharePoint Site.

• Create an application definition file for the SAP artifacts using the Business Data Catalog in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. For more information, see Step 2: Create an Application Definition File for the SAP Artifacts in Tutorial 1: Presenting Data from an SAP System on a SharePoint Site.

Step 1: Create a custom Web Part

To create a custom Web Part using Visual Studio, do the following:
1. Start Visual Studio, and then create a project.

1. In the New Project dialog box, from the Project types pane, select Visual C#. From the Templates pane, select Class Library.

Specify a name and location for the solution. For this topic, specify CustomWebPart in the Name and Solution Name boxes. Specify a location, and then click OK.

Add a reference to the System.Web component into the project. Right-click the project name in Solution Explorer, and then click Add Reference. In the Add Reference dialog box, select System.Web in the .NET tab, and then click OK. The System.Web component contains the required namespace of System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.

Add the required code based on your issue in the project. For the code sample that is relevant to a certain issue, see “Issues Involving Custom Web Parts” in Considerations While Using the SAP Adapter with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

Build the project. On successful build of the project, a .dll file, CustomWebPart.dll, will be generated in the /bin/Debug folder.

Only for 64-bit computer: Sign the CustomWebPart.dll file with a strong name before performing the following steps. Otherwise, you will not be able to import, and hence use the CustomWebPart.dll in the SharePoint portal in “Step 3: Configure the SharePoint Portal to use the custom Web Part.” For information about how to sign an assembly with a strong name, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=197171.

Step 2: Deploy the custom Web Part to a SharePoint Portal

You must do the following to make the CustomWebPart.dll file (custom Web Part) that is created in “Step 1: Create a custom Web Part” of this topic usable on the SharePoint portal:
• Copy the CustomWebPart.dll file to the bin folder of the SharePoint Portal: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server creates portals under the :\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories folder. A folder is created for each portal, and can be identified with the port number. You must copy the CustomWebPart.dll file created in “Step 1: Create a custom Web Part” of this topic to the :\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\bin folder. For example, if the port number of your SharePoint portal is 13614, you must copy the CustomWebPart.dll file to the :\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\13614\bin folder.

TipTip

Another way to find the folder location of your SharePoint portal is by using the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager window (Start > Run > inetmgr). Locate your SharePoint portal in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager window ([computer_name] > Web Sites > [Portal-Name]), right-click, and then click Properties in the shortcut menu. In the properties dialog box of the SharePoint portal, click the Home Directory tab, and then select the Local path box.

• Add the Safe Control Entry in the web.config File: Because the CustomWebPart.dll file will be used on different computers and by multiple users, you must declare the file as “safe.” To do so, open the web.config file located in the SharePoint portal folder at :\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories. Under the section of the web.config file, add the following safe control entry:

◦On 32-bit computer:

Copy

 

◦On 64-bit computer:

Copy

 

Save the web.config file, and then close it.

Step 3: Configure the SharePoint portal to use the custom Web Part

You need to add the custom Web Part to the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Web Part Gallery, so that you can use it on your SharePoint portal. To do so:

1. Start SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft Office Server, and then click SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

In the left navigation pane, click the name of the Shared Service Provider (SSP) to which you want to add the custom Web Part.

On the Shared Services Administration page, in the upper-right corner, click Site Actions, and then click Create.

On the Site Settings page, click Web Parts under the Galleries column.

On the Web Part Gallery page, to add the custom Web Part to the gallery, click New. At this point the custom Web Part is not available in the Web Part Gallery page.

On the New Web Parts page, locate CustomWebPart (name of the custom Web Part) in the list, select the check box on the left, and then click Populate Gallery on the top of the page. This will add the CustomWebPart entry in the Web Part Gallery page.

Now you can use the custom Web Part (CustomWebPart) to create Web Parts in your SharePoint portal. The custom Web Part (CustomWebPart) will appear under the Miscellaneous section in the Add Web Parts page.

 

BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite and the WCF LOB Adapter SDK

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The Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite implements a set of core components that leverage functionality provided by the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Line of Business (LOB) Adapter SDK and provide connectivity to the SAP system through the SAP Unicode RFC SDK Library (librfc32u.dll).

The WCF LOB Adapter SDK serves as the software layer through which the SAP adapter interfaces with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and the RFC SDK serves as the layer through which the SAP adapter interfaces with the SAP system.

The following figure shows the relationships between the internal components of the SAP adapter and between these components and the RFC SDK.

See

 

SAP Weekend : Part 2 – Using the Microsoft BizTalk Server for B2B Integration with SharePoint

This is Part 2 of my past weekend’s activities with SharePoint and SAP Integration methods.

 

In this post I am looking at how to use the BizTalk Adapter with SharePoint

 

Topics

• Abstract
• Goal
• Business Scenario
• Environment
• Document Flow
• Integration Steps
• .NET Support
• Summary

 

Abstract

In the past few years, the whole perspective of doing business has been moved towards implementing Enterprise Resource Planning Systems for the key areas like marketing, sales and manufacturing operations. Today most of the large organizations which deal with all major world markets, heavily rely on such key areas.

Operational Systems of any organization can be achieved from its worldwide network of marketing teams as well as from manufacturing and distribution techniques. In order to provide customers with realistic information, each of these systems need to be integrated as part of the larger enterprise.

This ultimately results into efficient enterprise overall, providing more reliable information and better customer service. This paper addresses the integration of Biztalk Server and Enterprise Resource Planning System and the need for their integration and their role in the current E-Business scenario.

 

Goal

There are several key business drivers like customers and partners that need to communicate on different fronts for successful business relationship. To achieve this communication, various systems need to get integrated that lead to evaluate and develop B2B Integration Capability and E–Business strategy. This improves the quality of business information at its disposal—to improve delivery times, costs, and offer customers a higher level of overall service.

To provide B2B capabilities, there is a need to give access to the business application data, providing partners with the ability to execute global business transactions. Facing internal integration and business–to–business (B2B) challenges on a global scale, organization needs to look for required solution.

To integrate the worldwide marketing, manufacturing and distribution facilities based on core ERP with variety of information systems, organization needs to come up with strategic deployment of integration technology products and integration service capabilities.

 

Business Scenario

Now take the example of this ABC Manufacturing Company: whose success is the strength of its European-wide trading relationships. Company recognizes the need to strengthen these relationships by processing orders faster and more efficiently than ever before.

The company needed a new platform that could integrate orders from several countries, accepting payments in multiple currencies and translating measurements according to each country’s standards. Now, the bottom line for ABC’s e-strategy was to accelerate order processing. To achieve this: the basic necessity was to eliminate the multiple collections of data and the use of invalid data.

By using less paper, ABC would cut processing costs and speed up the information flow. Keeping this long term goal in mind, ABC Manufacturing Company can now think of integrating its four key countries into a new business-to-business (B2B) platform.

 

Here is another example of this XYZ Marketing Company. Users visit on this company’s website to explore a variety of products for its thousands of customers all over the world. Now this company always understood that they could offer greater benefits to customers if they could more efficiently integrate their customers’ back-end systems. With such integration, customers could enjoy the advantages of highly efficient e-commerce sites, where a visitor on the Web could place an order that would flow smoothly from the website to the customer’s order entry system.

 

Some of those back-end order entry systems are built on the latest, most sophisticated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system on the market, while others are built on legacy systems that have never been upgraded. Different customers requires information formatted in different ways, but XYZ has no elegant way to transform the information coming out of website to meet customer needs. With the traditional approach:

For each new e-commerce customer on the site, XYZ’s staff needs to work for significant amounts of time creating a transformation application that would facilitate the exchange of information. But with better approach: XYZ needs a robust messaging solution that would provide the flexibility and agility to meet a range of customer needs quickly and effectively. Now again XYZ can think of integrating Customer Backend Systems with the help of business-to-business (B2B) platform.

 

Environment

Many large scale organizations maintain a centralized SAP environment as its core enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The SAP system is used for the management and processing of all global business processes and practices. B2B integration mainly relies on the asynchronous messaging, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and XML document transformation mechanisms to facilitate the transformation and exchange of information between any ERP System and other applications including legacy systems.

For business document routing, transformation, and tracking, existing SAP-XML/EDI technology road map needs XML service engine. This will allow development of complex set of mappings from and to SAP to meet internal and external XML/EDI technology and business strategy. Microsoft BizTalk Server is the best choice to handle the data interchange and mapping requirements. BizTalk Server has the most comprehensive development and management support among business-to-business platforms. Microsoft BizTalk Server and BizTalk XML Framework version 2.0 with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) version 1.1 provide precisely the kind of messaging solution that is needed to facilitate integration with cost effective manner.

 

Document Flow

Friends, now let’s look at the actual flow of document from Source System to Customer Target System using BizTalk Server. When a document is created, it is sent to a TCP/IP-based Application Linking and Enabling (ALE) port—a BizTalk-based receive function that is used for XML conversion. Then the document passes the XML to a processing script (VBScript) that is running as a BizTalk Application Integration Component (AIC). The following figure shows how BizTalk Server acts as a hub between applications that reside in two different organizations:

The data is serialized to the customer/vendor XML format using the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) generated from the BizTalk Mapper using a BizTalk channel. The XML document is sent using synchronous Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) or another requested transport protocol such as the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), as specified by the customer.

The following figure shows steps for XML document transformation:

The total serialized XML result is passed back to the processing script that is running as a BizTalk AIC. An XML “receipt” document then is created and submitted to another BizTalk channel that serializes the XML status document into a SAP IDOC status message. Finally, a Remote Function Call (RFC) is triggered to the SAP instance/client using a compiled C++/VB program to update the SAP IDOC status record. A complete loop of document reconciliation is achieved. If the status is not successful, an e-mail message is created and sent to one of the Support Teams that own the customer/vendor business XML/EDI transactions so that the conflict can be resolved. All of this happens instantaneously in a completely event-driven infrastructure between SAP and BizTalk.

Integration Steps

Let’s talk about a very popular Order Entry and tracking scenario while discussing integration hereafter. The following sections describe the high-level steps required to transmit order information from Order Processing pipeline Component into the SAP/R3 application, and to receive order status update information from the SAP/R3 application.

The integration of AFS purchase order reception with SAP is achieved using the BizTalk Adapter for SAP (BTS-SAP). The IDOC handler is used by the BizTalk Adapter to provide the transactional support for bridging tRFC (Transactional Remote Function Calls) to MSMQ DTC (Distributed Transaction Coordinator). The IDOC handler is a COM object that processes IDOC documents sent from SAP through the Com4ABAP service, and ensures their successful arrival at the appropriate MSMQ destination. The handler supports the methods defined by the SAP tRFC protocol. When integrating purchase order reception with the SAP/R3 application, BizTalk Server (BTS) provides the transformation and messaging functionality, and the BizTalk Adapter for SAP provides the transport and routing functionality.

The following two sequential steps indicate how the whole integration takes place:

• Purchase order reception integration
• Order Status Update Integration

Purchase Order Reception Integration

1. Suppose a new pipeline component is added to the Order Processing pipeline. This component creates an XML document that is equivalent to the OrderForm object that is passed through the pipeline. This XML purchase order is in Commerce Server Order XML v1.0 format, and once created, is sent to a special Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) queue created specifically for this purpose.Writing the order from the pipeline to MSMQ:>

   The first step in sending order data to the SAP/R3 application involves building a new pipeline component to run within the Order Processing pipeline. This component must perform the following two tasks:

   A] Make an XML-formatted copy of the OrderForm object that is passing through the order processing pipeline. The GenerateXMLForDictionaryUsingSchema method of the DictionaryXMLTransforms object is used to create the copy.

    

   Private Function IPipelineComponent_Execute(ByVal objOrderForm As Object, _
       ByVal objContext As Object, ByVal lFlags As Long) As Long
   
   On Error GoTo ERROR_Execute
   
   Dim oXMLTransforms As Object
   Dim oXMLSchema As Object
   Dim oOrderFormXML As Object
   
   ' Return 1 for Success.
   IPipelineComponent_Execute = 1
   
   ' Create a DictionaryXMLTransforms object.
   Set oXMLTransforms = CreateObject("Commerce.DictionaryXMLTransforms")
   
   ' Create a PO schema object.
   Set oXMLSchema = oXMLTransforms.GetXMLFromFile(sSchemaLocation)
   
   ' Create an XML version of the order form.
   Set oOrderFormXML = oXMLTransforms.GenerateXMLForDictionaryUsingSchema_
       (objOrderForm, oXMLSchema)
   
   WritePO2MSMQ sQueueName, oOrderFormXML.xml, PO_TO_ERP_QUEUE_LABEL, _
       sBTSServerName, AFS_PO_MAXTIMETOREACHQUEUE
   
   Exit Function
   
   ERROR_Execute:
   App.LogEvent "QueuePO.CQueuePO -> Execute Error: " & _
   vbCrLf & Err.Description, vbLogEventTypeError
   
   ' Set warning level.
   IPipelineComponent_Execute = 2
   Resume Next
   
   End Function

   B] Send the newly created XML order document to the MSMQ queue defined for this purpose.

    

   Option Explicit
   
   ' MSMQ constants.
   
   ' Access modes.
   Const MQ_RECEIVE_ACCESS = 1
   Const MQ_SEND_ACCESS = 2
   Const MQ_PEEK_ACCESS = 32
   
   ' Sharing modes. Const MQ_DENY_NONE = 0
   Const MQ_DENY_RECEIVE_SHARE = 1
   
   ' Transaction options. Const MQ_NO_TRANSACTION = 0
   Const MQ_MTS_TRANSACTION = 1
   Const MQ_XA_TRANSACTION = 2
   Const MQ_SINGLE_MESSAGE = 3
   
   ' Error messages.
   Const MQ_ERROR_QUEUE_NOT_EXIST = -1072824317
   
   ' MQ Message ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
   Const MQMSG_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_FULL_REACH_QUEUE = 5
   Const MQMSG_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_FULL_RECEIVE = 14
   Const DEFAULT_MAX_TIME_TO_REACH_QUEUE = 20
   ' MQ Message ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
   Const MQMSG_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_FULL_REACH_QUEUE = 5
   Const MQMSG_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_FULL_RECEIVE = 14
   
   Function WritePO2MSMQ(sQueueName As String, sMsgBody As String, _
       sMsgLabel As String, sServerName As String, _
       Optional MaxTimeToReachQueue As Variant) As Long
   
   Dim lMaxTime As Long
   
   If IsMissing(MaxTimeToReachQueue) Then
   lMaxTime = DEFAULT_MAX_TIME_TO_REACH_QUEUE
   Else
   lMaxTime = MaxTimeToReachQueue
   End If
   
   Dim objQueueInfo As MSMQ.MSMQQueueInfo
   Dim objQueue As MSMQ.MSMQQueue, objAdminQueue As MSMQ.MSMQQueue
   Dim objQueueMsg As MSMQ.MSMQMessage
   
   On Error GoTo MSMQ_Error
   
   Set objQueueInfo = New MSMQ.MSMQQueueInfo
   objQueueInfo.FormatName = "DIRECT=OS:" & sServerName & "\PRIVATE$\" & sQueueName
   
   Set objQueue = objQueueInfo.Open(MQ_SEND_ACCESS, MQ_DENY_NONE)
   
   Set objQueueMsg = New MSMQ.MSMQMessage
   
   objQueueMsg.Label = sMsgLabel ' Set the message label property
   objQueueMsg.Body = sMsgBody ' Set the message body property
   objQueueMsg.Ack = MQMSG_ACKNOWLEDGMENT_FULL_REACH_QUEUE
   objQueueMsg.MaxTimeToReachQueue = lMaxTime
   
   objQueueMsg.send objQueue, MQ_SINGLE_MESSAGE
   
   objQueue.Close
   
   On Error Resume Next
   Set objQueueMsg = Nothing
   Set objQueue = Nothing
   Set objQueueInfo = Nothing
   
   Exit Function
   
   MSMQ_Error:
   App.LogEvent "Error in WritePO2MSMQ: " & Error
   Resume Next
   
   End Function
   

2. A BTS MSMQ receive function picks up the document from the MSMQ queue and sends it to a BTS channel that has been configured for this purpose. Receiving the XML order from MSMQ: The second step in sending order data to the SAP/R3 application involves BTS receiving the order data from the MSMQ queue into which it was placed at the end of the first step. You must configure a BTS MSMQ receive function to monitor the MSMQ queue to which the XML order was sent in the previous step. This receive function forwards the XML message to the configured BTS channel for transformation.
3. The third step in sending order data to the SAP/R3 application involves BTS transforming the order data from Commerce Server Order XML v1.0 format into ORDERS01 IDOC format. A BTS channel must be configured to perform this transformation. After the transformation is complete, the BTS channel sends the resulting ORDERS01 IDOC message to the corresponding BTS messaging port. The BTS messaging port is configured to send the transformed message to an MSMQ queue called the 840 Queue. Once the message is placed in this queue, the BizTalk Adapter for SAP is responsible for further processing. 
4. BizTalk Adapter for SAP sends the ORDERS01document to the DCOM Connector (Get more information on DCOM Connector from www.sap.com/bapi), which writes the order to the SAP/R3 application. The DCOM Connector is an SAP software product that provides a mechanism to send data to, and receive data from, an SAP system. When an IDOC message is placed in the 840 Queue, the DOM Connector retrieves the message and sends it to SAP for processing. Although this processing is in the domain of the BizTalk Adapter for SAP, the steps involved are reviewed here as background information:
   • Determine the version of the IDOC schema in use and generate a BizTalk Server document specification.
   • Create a routing key from the contents of the Control Record of the IDOC schema.
   • Request a SAP Destination from the Manager Data Store given the constructed routing key.
   • Submit the IDOC message to the SAP System using the DCOM Connector 4.6D Submit functionality.

Order Status Update Integration

Order status update integration can be achieved by providing a mechanism for sending information about updates made within the SAP/R3 application back to the Commerce Server order system.

The following sequence of steps describes such a mechanism:

1. BizTalk Adapter for SAP processing:
   After a user has updated a purchase order using the SAP client, and the IDOC has been submitted to the appropriate tRFC port, the BizTalk Adapter for SAP uses the DCOM connector to send the resulting information to the 840 Queue, packaged as an ORDERS01 IDOC message. The 840 Queue is an MSMQ queue into which the BizTalk Adapter for SAP places IDOC messages so that they can be retrieved and processed by interested parties. This process is within the domain of the BizTalk Adapter for SAP, and is used by this solution to achieve the order update integration.
2. Receiving the ORDERS01 IDOC message from MSMQ:
   The second step in updating order status from the SAP/R3 application involves BTS receiving ORDERS01 IDOC message from the MSMQ queue (840 Queue) into which it was placed at the end of the first step. You must configure a BTS MSMQ receive function to monitor the 840 Queue into which the XML order status message was placed. This receive function must be configured to forward the XML message to the configured BTS channel for transformation.
3. Transforming the order update from IDOC format:
   Using a BTS MSMQ receive function, the document is retrieved and passed to a BTS transformation channel. The BTS channel transforms the ORDERS01 IDOC message into Commerce Server Order XML v1.0 format, and then forwards it to the corresponding BTS messaging port. You must configure a BTS channel to perform this transformation.The following BizTalk Server (BTS) map demonstrates in the prototyping of this solution for transforming an SAP ORDERS01 IDOC message into an XML document in Commerce Server Order XML v1.0 format. It allows a change to an order in the SAP/R3 application to be reflected in the Commerce Server orders database.

   This map used in the prototype only maps the order ID, demonstrating how the order in the SAP/R3 application can be synchronized with the order in the Commerce Server orders database. The mapping of other fields is specific to a particular implementation, and was not done for the prototype.

 

< xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform' 
xmlns:msxsl='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt' xmlns:var='urn:var' 
xmlns:user='urn:user' exclude-result-prefixes='msxsl var user' 
version='1.0'>
< xsl:output method='xml' omit-xml-declaration='yes' />
< xsl:template match='/'>
< xsl:apply-templates select='ORDERS01'/>
< /xsl:template>
< xsl:template match='ORDERS01'>
< orderform>

'Connection from source node "BELNR" to destination node "OrderID"

< xsl:if test='E2EDK02/@BELNR'>
< xsl:attribute name='OrderID'>
; < xsl:value-of select='E2EDK02/@BELNR'/>
< /xsl:attribute>
< /xsl:if>
< /orderform>
< /xsl:template>
< /xsl:stylesheet>

The BTS message port posts the transformed order update document to the configured ASP page for further processing. The configured ASP page retrieves the message posted to it and uses the Commerce Server OrderGroupManager and OrderGroup objects to update the order status information in the Commerce Server orders database.

Updating the Commerce Server order system:
The fourth step in updating order status from the SAP/R3 application involves updating the Commerce Server order system to reflect the change in status. This is accomplished by adding the page _OrderStatusUpdate.asp to the AFS Solution Site and configuring the BTS messaging port to post the transformed XML document to that page. The update is performed using the Commerce Server OrderGroupManager and OrderGroup objects.

 

The routine ProcessOrderStatus is the primary routine in the page. It uses the DOM and XPath to extract enough information to find the appropriate order using the OrderGroupManager object. Once the correct order is located, it is loaded into an OrderGroup object so that any of the entries in the OrderGroup object can be updated as needed.

The following code implements page _OrderStatusUpdate.asp:

 

< %@ Language="VBScript" %>

< % 
const TEMPORARY_FOLDER = 2

call Main()

Sub Main()
call ProcessOrderStatus( ParseRequestForm() )
End Sub

Sub ProcessOrderStatus(sDocument)

Dim oOrderGroupMgr 
Dim oOrderGroup 
Dim rs
Dim sPONum
Dim oAttr 
Dim vResult
Dim vTracking 
Dim oXML
Dim dictConfig
Dim oElement

Set oOrderGroupMgr = Server.CreateObject("CS_Req.OrderGroupManager")
Set oOrderGroup = Server.CreateObject("CS_Req.OrderGroup")

Set oXML = Server.CreateObject("MSXML.DOMDocument")
oXML.async = False

If oXML.loadXML (sDocument) Then

' Get the orderform element.
Set oElement = oXML.selectSingleNode("/orderform")

' Get the poNum.
sPONum = oElement.getAttribute("OrderID")

Set dictConfig = Application("MSCSAppConfig").GetOptionsDictionary("")

' Use ordergroupmgr to find the order by OrderID.
oOrderGroupMgr.Initialize (dictConfig.s_CatalogConnectionString)
Set rs = oOrderGroupMgr.Find(Array("order_requisition_number='" sPONum & "'"), _
    Array(""), Array(""))

If rs.EOF And rs.BOF Then
'Create a new one. - Not implemented in this version.
Else
' Edit the current one.
oOrderGroup.Initialize dictConfig.s_CatalogConnectionString, rs("User_ID")

' Load the found order.
oOrderGroup.LoadOrder rs("ordergroup_id")

' For the purposes of prototype, we only update the status
oOrderGroup.Value.order_status_code = 2 ' 2 = Saved order

' Save it
vResult = oOrderGroup.SaveAsOrder(vTracking)

End If
Else
WriteError "Unable to load received XML into DOM."
End If

End Sub Function ParseRequestForm()

Dim PostedDocument
Dim ContentType
Dim CharSet
Dim EntityBody
Dim Stream
Dim StartPos
Dim EndPos

ContentType = Request.ServerVariables( "CONTENT_TYPE" )

' Determine request entity body character set (default to us-ascii).
CharSet = "us-ascii"
StartPos = InStr( 1, ContentType, "CharSet=""", 1)
If (StartPos > 0 ) then
StartPos = StartPos + Len("CharSet=""")
EndPos = InStr( StartPos, ContentType, """",1 )
CharSet = Mid (ContentType, StartPos, EndPos - StartPos )
End If

' Check for multipart MIME message.
PostedDocument = ""

if ( ContentType = "" or Request.TotalBytes = 0) then

' Content-Type is required as well as an entity body.
Response.Status = "406 Not Acceptable"
Response.Write "Content-type or Entity body is missing" & VbCrlf
Response.Write "Message headers follow below:" & VbCrlf
Response.Write Request.ServerVariables("ALL_RAW") & VbCrlf
Response.End
Else
If ( InStr( 1,ContentType,"multipart/" ) >

.NET Support

This Multi-Tier Application Environment can be implemented successfully with the help of Web portal which utilizes the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server model. The Microsoft BizTalk Server Toolkit for Microsoft .NET provides the ability to leverage the power of XML Web services and Visual Studio .NET to build dynamic, transaction-based, fault-tolerant systems with full access to existing applications.

Summary

Microsoft BizTalk Server can help organizations quickly establish and manage Internet relationships with other organizations. It makes it possible for them to automate document interchange with any other organization, regardless of the conversion requirements and data formats used. This provides a cost-effective approach for integrating business processes across large Enterprises Resource Planning Systems. Integration process designed to facilitate collaborative e-commerce business processes. The process includes a document interchange engine, a business process execution engine, and a set of business document and server management tools. In addition, a business document editor and mapper tools are provided for managing trading partner relationships, administering server clusters, and tracking transactions.

References

• www.microsoft.com/biztalk
• MSDN

All my Web Parts and Apps are now making use of Knockout.JS !! Template also available at very low price!!

After completing the development of my latest Web Part, the “List Search” Web Part I decided to update all my Web Parts and Apps to using Knockout.JS, starting with the “List Search” Web Part.

This topic came up when we I looked at some of my older products that includes generic list and library web parts, that would display few common fields like ID, Title, Description, File Url etc. Prior to this request we solved similar issues with OOB list and library web parts with custom XSLT, by creating Visual Studio web part for branding purposes only, or by using Imtech content query web part( which is XSLT solution by design).

At the end, clients hated XSLT solutions and I hated to create new web part for every new list or library. That’s where Knockout popped. Why don’t we use Knockout for templates instead XSLT.

I’ll assume that whoever reads this article knows about creating a web part for SharePoint, SharePoint module, java script and html and I will not go into details.

Background

A bit about Knockout

From Knockout web site: “Knockout is a JavaScript library that helps you to create rich, responsive display and editor user interfaces with a clean underlying data model. “

From Wikipedia:

Knockout is a standalone JavaScript implementation of the Model-View-ViewModel pattern with templates. The underlying principles are therefore:

• a clear separation between domain data, view components and data to be displayed
• the presence of a clearly defined layer of specialized code to manage the relationships between the view components

Knockout includes the following features:

• Declarative bindings
• Automatic UI refresh (when the data model’s state changes, the UI updates automatically)
• Dependency tracking
• Templating (using a native template engine although other templating engines can be used, such as jquery.tmpl)

So what’s the deal?

First you have your view model:

 var myViewModel = {
     personName: 'Bob',
     personAge: 123
};

Then you have a view:

The name is <span data-bind="text:personName"></span>

At the end just bind your view to model

 ko.applyBindings(myViewModel);

We’ll talk about model later.

Using the code

Proof of concept

I’ve created an html mock of our web part. This is useful, because we can prepare java scripts, css files, models and views in advance and test it without SharePoint and visual studio.

You can download proof of concept as separate download from the link above.

References

There would be only two file references.

One is knockout library itself

<script type='text/javascript' src="http://knockoutjs.com/downloads/knockout-3.0.0.js"></script>

and the other is css file I’ve added to this project

<link href="css/controls.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Model 

I’ve designed model as Item class. Here it is:

// Item class definition
var Item = function (id, title, datecreated,url,description,thumbnail) {
   this.id = id;
   this.title = title;
   this.datecreated = datecreated;
   this.url=url;
   this.description=description;
   this.thumbnail=thumbnail;
}

It’s called item and it has 6 properties:

1. id – ID of the item
2. title – Title of the item
3. datecreated – Creation date of the item
4. url – Url of the item
5. description – Description of the item
6. thumbnail – Thumbnail of the item

 

View model

Here is the view model

 

function viewModel1 (){
    var self = this;
    self.items =  [  
     new Item(2, 'News1 title','21.10.2013','javascript:OpenDialog(2);'
               ,'Description News 1','img/pic1.jpg'), 
    new Item(1, 'News 2 title','21.02.2013','javascript:OpenDialog(1);',
               'Description News 2','img/pic2.jpg')
}

View model has property items, which in fact is collection of Item objects. For mocking purposes we’ve added two Item objects in this collection (News 1 and News 2);

 

View

Here is the view:

<div class="glwp glwp-central" id="k1">
  <div class="glwpLine"></div>
  <h5><img src="PublishingImages/siteIcon.png" 
          width="28" height="28" align="absmiddle" />
      News</h5>
  <div class="glwpLineGrey"></div>
    <ul data-bind="foreach:items">
      <li>
       <div class="glwpDate"><span data-bind="text: datecreated" ></span>
       <img class="glwpImage" data-bind="attr: { src: thumbnail }" />         
       </div>
       <div class="glwpText glwpText-central" >
        <a data-bind="attr: { href: url, title: title }" style="min-height:70px;">
         <span class="glwpTextTTL" data-bind="text:title"></span><br />
         <span data-bind="text: description"></span>
        </a>
       </div>
       <div class="glwpSep"></div>
      </li>
    </ul>
</div>

What we have here:

It’s pretty simple. We haveunordered list bound to our model. One

• element would be created for every item of our items collection (data-bind=”foreach: items”).

 

 

Property binding: 

•  datecreated">< /span> – This is the simplest data binding. It would write datecreated property of Item object to text of span element (like: <span>11/11/2013</span>)
• <img class="glwpImage" data-bind="attr: { src: thumbnail }" />. This is a bit more complicated binding. It would take thumbnail property of item object and write it to src attribute of img element.
• 70px;">. It would take url property and write it as href attribute of the a element, and title property as title attribute.
• <span class="glwpTextTTL" data-bind="text:title"></span>. Title property would be written as text of span element
• <span data-bind="text: description"></span>. Description property would be written as text of span element

So anyone with little knowledge of html and css can customize this template anyway (s)he likes, as long as (s)he provides required properties.

 

Binding

ko.applyBindings(viewModel1,document.getElementById('k1'));

Note second parameter in applyBindings method. It says document.getElementById('k1'). Same id is on the first div in our view (k1″>). This is helpful if you want to have more than one view model in one page. It tells knockout to bind this specific model (viewModel1) to specific template on our page (k1).

 

What we have from this? We are going to create web part from this code and one of the web part features is that you can put same web part several times on the same page. So it would be possible to put one web part in SharePoint page to display news and one web part to display projects or documents. And they will coexist together.

If you look at the source you will notice that we have 2 view models (viewModel1 and viewModel2) and two templates (k1 and k2), and two bindings of course. One binding is for news (with images and description) and one binding is for files (no images, and no descriptions). Templates are slightly different.

Final result

Here is the final result

SharePoint Part

As I said I will assume that you have some experience with SharePoint development so I will not explain how to create the project and add project items. Project type is standard Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Empty Project template.

SharePoint part consists of following items:

• Web part item – KnockoutWp. Standard SharePoint Visual Web part project Item
• Assets module. SharePoint module project item. We are going to use it for deploying of images and css files (0.png – empty container for images and controls.css – css file for our projects).
• Layouts mapped folder. We’ll put here editor page for template.

And here is the solution explorer for project:

Assets

We are going to deploy 2 files:

• 0.png – 1×1 pixel transparent image aka placeholder
• Controls.css – css file for our template

Both of these items are going to be deployed to Style Library of the SharePoint site collection, so content editors may change it later without need of solution redeployment.

Here is the elements.xml file:

So our assets will end to http://oursitecollectionurl/Style Library/wp folder.

KnockoutWp

This is Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web part.

It is consisted of 4 items:

• KnockoutWp.cs – web part class
• KnockoutWpUserControl – User control of our web part
• KnockoutWp.webpart – web part xml file
• Elements.xml – manifest file

Properties

Web part has following properties:

• ListUrl (string, required) – url of the list we are displaying.
• TitleField (string, optional) – display name of the field that would be displayed as Title. If it’s blank Title field would be used.
• DateField (string, optional) – display name of the field that would be displayed as date. If it’s blank Created field would be used.
• DescriptionField (string, optional) – display name of the field that would be displayed as Description. If it’s blank it would be omitted.
• ImageField (string, optional) – display name of the field that would be displayed as Thumbnail picture. If it’s blank it would be omitted.
• NoOfItems (int) – how many items from the list would be displayed
• ItemTemplate (string) – html template of the web part. Defines the look of our web part.
• WpPosition (enum) – Used for a three column layouts. Web part has styles for three zones: right, central and left. Difference is in width, padding and margin. Everything is set in css so you can accommodate it to your environment.

On picture below you can see mapping between Field properties of web part and list item fields.

 

EditorPart

I’ve added one more thing to this web part it’s EditorPart class GenericListPartEditorPart. I’m not going into deep with editor parts, but here is quick info. When you create public property for a web part it is automatically displayed in web part edit panel.

And it is great concept when you need simple properties as strings, numbers and short lists. If you want more complicated scenario (as we want here for our web part) it’s not enough.

What I wanted here is template editor. It could be reasonably large so idea was to have a button in web part edit panel that would open large dialog window with editor. User would work with our template, click Apply and change ItemTemplate web part property.

Template editor KnockoutWpUserControl

This is user control created by Visual Studio, when we added Visual web part project item to the project. It consists of markup ascx file and code behind .ascx.cs file. We will put our markup and our c# code here.

Markup

Here is the complete markup:

Collapse | Copy Code

<script type='text/javascript' src="http://knockoutjs.com/downloads/knockout-3.0.0.js">
</script>
<style type="text/css">  @import url("/Style
Library/wp/controls.css");  </style>  
<div class="glwp glwp-<%=PositionClass %>" id="k<%=WpId %>">
  <div class="glwpLine"></div>      
  <h5><img src="<%=Icon %>" width="28" 
    height="28" align="absmiddle"><%=Title %></h5>
    <div class="glwpLineGrey"></div>      
  <asp:Literal ID="LitLayout" runat="server"></asp:Literal>
</div>  

<script type="text/javascript">    
  function OpenDialog(Url) {
    var options = SP.UI.$create_DialogOptions();        
    options.resizable = 1;        
    options.scroll = 1;        
    options.url = Url;
    SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);    
}         
// Item class         
  var Item = function (id, title, datecreated,url,description,thumbnail) {            
     this.id = id;            
     this.title = title;
     this.datecreated = datecreated;
     this.url=url;
     this.description=description;
     this.thumbnail=thumbnail;
  }         
 //ViewModel goes here (It's created on server)        
 runat="server" ID="LitItems"></asp:Literal>
 
//Function that opens Template editor. Used only in edit mode of web part       
 function portal_openTemplateEditor(wpid) {       
  var val="";              
  var options = SP.UI.$create_DialogOptions();              
  options.width = 600;             
  options.height = 500;                
  options.url = "/_layouts/KnockoutTemplate/TemplateEditor.aspx?c="+wpid;//"";
  options.dialogReturnValueCallback =
           Function.createDelegate(null,portal_openTemplateEditorClosedCallback);
  SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);
}
</script>

First Section, of the markup (picture below) has script (knockout, on the remote server) and style references (controls.css in local Document library). Below is html markup that defines the container of the web part (top and bottom borders, width, icon and title). Markup is not the cleanest because I was little lazy and left some public properties in it. Note< %=PositionClass%>, <%=WpId%> and so on.

There are all public properties of the user control and they are used for presentation:

• PositionClass – depending on WpPosition web part property (right, central or left) adds appropriate css class to markup and that way defines width, padding and margin of web part WpId is guid of the web part. It is used to uniquely identify the web part, because we can put several web parts of the same type and everything would crush without this identificator.
• Icon – is a url to icon that would be displayed on web part. Web part property Title Icon Image URL is used here (this is OOB property)
• Title –title text of the web part. Text that was entered in the title area of the web part. Web part property Title is used here (this is OOB property)

Last interesting thing here is Literal control LitLayout. This control would hold our ItemTemplate property (html template of our web part).

Second section, is a java script function that opens list item in a dialog window. It is used when underlying list is not document library.

Third section consists of knockout view model (java script). Item class definition is self-explanatory (defines 6 properties only). The rest of the model is created on the server side so now there is only LitItems Literal control there.

Fourth section is just a java script function that is used when editing web part properties. This function opens template editor in dialog window.

Code

Properties:

• Properties from web part
  • Icon – url to the icon
  • Title – title of the web part
  • ListUrl – url to the list
  • TitleField – Title field in the list
  • DateField – Date field in the list
  • ImageField – Image field in the list
  • DescriptionField – Description field in the list
  • NoOfItems – number of items to return
  • Position – position of the web part (right, left or central)
  • ItemTemplate – html template of the web part
  • WpId – guid id of the web part ·
• UC’s properties
  • PositionClass – css class based on position
  • ColumnMap – dictionary that holds internal names of the list item fields.

Methods: File has only one method Page_Load. Code is executing with elevated privileges.

In that method we:

1. Resolve list by the supplied URL (ListUrl property) SPList annList = annWeb.GetList(ListUrl);
2. Get internal names of the list columns by their Display names SpHelper.GetFieldsInternals(annWeb, annList.Title, TitleField, DateField, DescriptionField, ImageField, columnMap );
3. Create CAML Query SpHelper.GetGenericQuery(annList, q, NoOfItems);
4. Execute it
5. Iterate over SPListItemCollection (coll) and create required JavaScript

Helper class

SPHelper is helper class and you can find it in Helpers directory.

It has 3 responsibilities:

1. To retrieve List Columns Internal names based on supplied List Columns display names (WP properties – TitleField – Title field, DateField, ImageField , DescriptionField ) – GetFieldsInternals method
2. To create Caml query for retrieving list items – GetGenericQuery method
3. To retrieve values from SharePoint columns based on their types – GetFieldValue method

 

New Web Part released – List Search Web Part now available!!

The List Search Web Part reads the entries from a Sharepoint List or Library (located anywhere in the site collection) and displays the selected user fields in a grid with an optional interactive search filter. It can be used for WSS3.0, MOSS 2007, Sharepoint 2010 and Sharepoint 2013.  a The following parameters can be configured: Sharepoint Site List Columns to be displayed Filtering, Grouping, Searching, Paging and Sorting of rows AZ Index optional Header text

Installation Instructions:

1. download the List Search Web Part Installation Instructions
2. either install the web part manually or deploy the feature to your server/farm as described in the instructions. 
3. Security Note:
   if you get the following error message: “Only an administrator may enumerate through all user profiles“, you will need to grant the application pool account(s) for the web application(s) „Manage User Profiles” permissions within the User Profile Sevice (SSP in case of MOSS2007).  
   This ensures that the application pool is able to retrieve the list of user profiles. 
   To assign this permission, access your active “User Profile Service” (SP 2010 Server ) or the “Shared Services Provider” (MOSS2007) via Central Admin. 
   From the „User Profiles and My Sites” group, click “Personalization services permissions”.  
   Add the „Manage User Profiles” permission to  your application pool account(s).
4. Configure the following Web Part properties in the Web Part Editor “Miscellaneous” pane section as needed:
   

   Site Name: Enter the name of the site that contains the List or Library: – leave this field empty if the List is in the current site (eg. the Web Part is placed in the same site) – Enter a “/” character if the List is contained in the top site – Enter a path if the List in in a subsite of the current site (eg. in the form of “current site/subsite”) List Name: Enter the name of the desired Sharepoint List or Library Example: Project Documents View Name: Optionally enter the desired List View of the list specified above. A List View allows you to specify specific data filtering and sorting.  Leave this field empty if you want to use the List default view. Field Template: Enter the List columns to be displayed (separated by semicolons). Pictures can be attached (via File Upload) to the Sharepoint List items and displayed using the symbolic “Picture” column name. If you want to allow users to edit their own entries, please add the symbolic “Username” column name to the Field Template. An “Edit” symbol will then displayed to allow the user to navigate to the corresponding Edit Form:Example: Type;Name;Title;Modified;Modified By;Created By Friendly Header Names: If you would like to display a “friendly header name” instead of the default property name please append it to the User property, separated by the “|” pipe symbol. Example: Picture;LastName|Last Name;FirstName;Department;Email|Email Address Hiding individual columns: You can hide a column by prefixing it with a “!” character.  The following example hides the “Department” column:  LastName;FirstName;!Department;WorkEmail Suppress Column wrapping: You can suppress the wrapping of text inside a column by prefixing it with a “^” character. LastName;FirstName;Department;^AboutMe Showing the E-Mail address as plain text: You can opt to display the plain e-mail address (instead of the envelope icon) by appending “/plain” to the WorkEmail column: LastName;WorkEmail/plain;Department Group By: enter an optional User property to group the rows. Sort By: enter the List column(s) to define the default sort order. You can add multiple properties separated by commas. Append “/desc” to sort the column descending. Examples: Department Department,LastName Lastname/desc The columns headings can be clicked by the users to manually define the sort order. AZ Index Column: enter an optional List column to display the AZ filter in the list header.  If an “!” character is appended to the property name, the “A” index will be forced when visiting the page. Example: LastName!  Search Box: enter one or more List columns (separated by semicolons) to allow for interactive searching.Example: LastName;FirstName If you want to display a search filter as a dropdown combo, please enter it with a leading “@” character: LastName;FirstName;Department;@Office Friendly Search Box Labels: If you would like to display a “friendly label” instead of the default property name please append it to the User property, separated by the “|” pipe symbol. Example: WorkPhone|Office Phone;Office|Office Nbr   Align Search Filters vertically: allows you to align the seach input boxes vertically to save horizontal space: Rows per page: the Staff Directory web part supports paging and lets you specify the desired number of rows per page.  Image Height: specify the image height in pixels if you include the “Picture” property.  Enter “0” if you want to use the default picture size. Header Text: enter an optional header text. Please note that you can embed HTML tags if needed. You can additionally specify the text to be displayed if the “Show all entries” option is unchecked and the users has not performed a search yet by appending a “|” character followed by the text. Example: This is the regular header text|This text is only shown if the user has not yet performed a search Detail View Page: enter an optional column name prefixed by “detailview=” to link a column to the item detail view page. Append the “/popup” option if you want to open the detail page in a Sharepoint 2010/2013 dialog popup window. Examples: detailview=LastName detailview/popup=Title Alternating Row Color: enter the optional color of the alternating row background (leave blank to use default). Enter either the HTML color names (as eg. “red” etc.) or use hexadecimal RRGGBB coding (as eg. “#CCFFCC”). Enter the values without the double quotes. You can also change the default background color of the non-alternating rows by appending a second color value separated by a semicolon. Example: #ffffcc;#ffff99  The default Header style can be changed by adding the “AESD_Headerstyle” appSettings variable to the web.config “appSettings” section: <appSettings> <add key=“AESD_Headerstyle“ value=“background:green;font-size:10pt;color:white“ /> <appSettings>   Show Column Headers: either show or suppress the List column header row. Header Row CSS Style: enter the optionall header row CSS style(s) as needed. Example: color:blue;white-space:nowrap Show Groups collapsed: either show the groups (if you specify a column in the “Group By” setting) collapsed or expanded when entering the page. Enforce Security: hides the web part if user has no access to the site or the list. This avoids a login prompt if the user has not at least “View” permission on the list or site containing the list. Show all entries: either show all directory entries or none when first visiting the page.  You can append a specific text to the “Header Text” field (see above) which is only displayed if this option is unchecked and no search has yet been performed by the user. Open Links in new window: either open the links in a new window or in the same browser window. Link Documents to Office365: open the Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents in the Office365 web viewer. Show ‘Add New Item’ Button: either show or suppress the “Add new item button” to let users add new items to the list (this option is security-trimmed). Export to CSV: Show/hide the “Export” button for Excel CSV File Export CSV Separator: Enter the desired CSV field separator character (Default=Comma). Use a semicolon in countries which use the commas as a decimal separator. Localization: enter the following 4 values (separated by semicolons) in your local language if you need to override the English strings corresponding to the  – Search button text,  – A..Z menu “View all” option,  – the text displayed for Hyperlink columns  – the optional “Group By” name (if grouping is enabled)Default: Search;View all;Visit License Key: enter your Product License Key (as supplied after purchase of the “Staff Directory Web Part” license key). Leave this field empty if you are using the free 30 day evaluation version.

 Contact me now at tomas.floyd@outlook.com for the List Search Web Part and other Free & Paid Web Parts and Apps for SharePoint 2010, 2013, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint Online

When should I choose to create a mail app versus an add-in for Outlook?

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angelgolfer

Mon, Dec 10 2012 4:55 PM

• 1

Some of you may or may not be aware that alongside with the legacy COM-based Office client object models, Office 2013 supports a new apps for Office developer platform. This blog post is intended to help new and existing Office developers understand the main differences between the COM-based object models and the apps for Office platform. In particular, this post focuses on Outlook, suggests why you should consider developing solutions as mail apps, and identifies those exceptional scenarios where add-ins may still be the more appropriate choice.

Contents:

An introduction to the apps for Office platform

Architectural differences between add-in model and apps for Office platform

Main features available to mail apps

Major objects for mail apps

Reasons to create mail apps instead of add-ins for Outlook

Reasons to choose add-ins

Conclusion

Further references

An introduction to the apps for Office platform

The apps for Office platform includes a JavaScript API for Office and a schema for apps for Office manifests. You can use this platform to extend web services and content into the context of rich and web clients of Office. An app for Office is a webpage that is developed using common web technologies, hosted inside an Office client application (such as Outlook) on-premises or in the cloud. Of the three types of apps for Office, the type that Outlook supports is called mail apps. While you use the legacy APIs—the object model, PIA, and MAPI—to automate Outlook at an application level, you can use the JavaScript API for Office in a mail app to interact at an item level with the content and properties of an email message, meeting request, or appointment. You can publish mail apps in the Office Store or in an internal Exchange catalog. End users and administrators can install mail apps for an Exchange 2013 mailbox, and use mail apps in the Outlook rich client as well as Outlook Web App. As a developer, you can choose to make your mail app available for end users on only the desktop, or also on the tablet or smart phone. You can find more information about the apps for Office platform by starting here: Overview of apps for Office.

Architectural differences between add-in model and apps for Office platform

Add-in model

The Office add-in model offers individual object models for most of the Office rich clients. Each object model is intended to automate the corresponding Office client, and allows an add-in to integrate closely with the behavior of that client. The same add-in can integrate with one or multiple Office applications, such as Outlook, Word, and Excel, by calling into each of the Outlook, Word, and Excel object models. Figure 1 describes a few examples of 1:1 relationships between an Office rich client and its object model.

Figure 1. The legacy Office development architecture is composed of individual client object models.

 

Apps for Office platform

The apps for Office platform includes an apps for Office schema. Using this schema, each app specifies a manifest that describes the permissions it requests, its requirements for its host applications (for example, a mail app requires the host to support the mailbox capability), its support for the default and any extra locales, display details for one or more form factors, and activation rules for a mail app to be available in the app bar.

In addition to the schema, the apps for Office platform includes the JavaScript API for Office. This API spans across all supporting Office clients and allows apps to move toward a single code base. Rather than automating or extending a particular Office client at the application level, the apps for Office platform allows apps to connect to services and extend them into the context of a document, message, or appointment item in a rich or web client. Figure 2 shows Office applications with their rich and web clients sharing a common app platform.

Figure 2. The apps for Office development architecture is composed of a common platform and individual object models.

 

One main difference of note is that the object models were designed to integrate tightly with the corresponding Office client applications. However, this tight integration has a side effect of requiring an add-in to run in the same process as the rich client. The reliability and performance of an add-in often affects the perceived performance of the rich client. Unlike client add-ins, an app for Office doesn’t integrate as tightly with the host application, does not share the same process as the rich client, and instead runs in its own isolated runtime environment. This environment offers a privacy and permission model that allows users and IT administrators to monitor their ecosystem of apps and enjoy enhanced security.

Main features available to mail apps

Contextual activation: Mail app activation is contextual, based on the app’s activation rules and current circumstances, including the item that is currently displayed in the Reading Pane or inspector. A mail app is activated and becomes available to end users when such circumstances satisfy the activation rules in the app manifest.

Matching known entities or regular expression: A mail app can specify certain entities (such as a phone number or address) or regular expressions in its activation rules. If a match for entities or regular expressions occurs in the item’s subject or body, the mail app can access the match for further processing.

Roaming settings: A mail app can save data that is specific to Outlook and the user’s Exchange mailbox for access in a subsequent Outlook session.

Accessing item properties: A mail app can access built-in properties of the current item, such as the sender, recipients, and subject of a message, or the location, start, end, organizer, and attendees of a meeting request.

Creating item-level custom properties: A mail app can save item-specific data in the user’s Exchange mailbox for access in a subsequent Outlook session.

Accessing user profile: A mail app can access the display name, email address, and time zone in the user’s profile.

Authentication by identity tokens: A mail app can authenticate a user by using a token that identifies the user’s email account on an Exchange Server.

Using Exchange Web Services: A mail app can perform more complex operations or get further data about an item through Exchange Web Services.

Permissions model and governance: Mail apps support a three-tier permissions model. This model provides the basis for privacy and security for end users of mail apps.

Major objects for mail apps

For mail apps, you can look at the JavaScript API for Office object model in three layers:

1. In the first layer, there are a few objects shared by all three types of apps for Office: Office, Context, and AsyncResult.
2. The second layer in the API that is applicable and specific to mail apps includes the Mailbox, Item, and UserProfile objects, which support accessing information about the user and the item currently selected in the user’s mailbox.
3. The third layer describes the data-level support for mail apps:
   1. There are CustomProperties and RoamingSettings that support persisting properties set up by the mail app for the selected item and for the user’s mailbox, respectively.
   2. There are the supported item objects, Appointment and Message, that inherit from Item, and the MeetingRequest object that inherits from Message. These objects represent the types of Outlook items that support mail apps: calendar items of appointments and meetings, and message items such as email messages, meeting requests, responses, and cancellations.
   3. Then there are the item-level properties (such as Appointment.subject) as well as objects and properties that support certain known Entities objects (for example Contact, MeetingSuggestion, PhoneNumber, and TaskSuggestion).

Figure 3 shows the major objects: Mailbox, Item, UserProfile, Appointment, Message, Entities, and their members.

Figure 3. Major objects and their members used by mail apps in the JavaScript API for Office.

Figure 4 shows all of the objects and enumerations in the JavaScript API for Office that pertain to mail apps.

Figure 4. All objects for mail apps in the JavaScript API for Office.

Figure 5 is a thumbnail of a diagram with all the objects and members that mail apps use. Zoom into the diagram at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=317271.

Figure 5. All objects and members used by mail apps in the JavaScript API for Office.

The following are common reasons why mail apps are a better choice for developers than add-ins:

• You can use existing knowledge of and the benefits of web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. For power users and new developers, XML, HTML, and JavaScript require less significant ramp-up time than COM-based APIs such as the Outlook object      model.
• You can use a simple web deployment model to update your mail app (including the web services that the app uses) on your web server without any complex installation on the Outlook client. In fact, any updates to the mail app, with the exception of the app manifest, do not require any updating on the Office client. You can update the code or user interface of the mail app conveniently just on the web server. This presents a significant advantage over the administrative overhead involved in updating add-ins.
• You can use a common web development platform for mail apps that can roam across the Outlook rich client and Outlook Web App on the desktop, tablet, and smartphone. On the other hand, add-ins use the object model for the Outlook rich client and, hence, can run on only that rich client on a desktop form factor.
• You can enjoy rapid turnaround of building and releasing apps via the Office Store.
• Because of the three-tier permissions model, users and administrators can appreciate better security and privacy in mail apps than add-ins, which have full access to the content of each account in the user’s profile. This, in turn, encourages user consumption of apps.
• Depending on your scenarios, there are features unique to mail apps that you can take advantage of and that are not supported by add-ins:
  • You can specify a mail app to activate only for certain contexts (for example, Outlook displays the app in the app bar only if the message class of the user-selected appointment is IPM.Appointment.Contoso, or if the body of an email contains a package       tracking number or a customer identifier).
  • You can activate a mail app if the selected message contains some known entities, such as an address, contact, email address, meeting suggestion, or task suggestion.
  • You can take advantage of authentication by identity tokens and of Exchange Web Services.

Reasons to choose add-ins

The following features are unique to add-ins and may make them a more appropriate choice than mail apps in some circumstances:

• You can use add-ins to extend or automate Outlook at an application-level, because the object model and PIA have extensive integration with Outlook features (such as all Outlook item types, user interface, sessions, and rules). At the item-level, add-ins can interact with an item in read or compose mode. With mail apps, you cannot automate Outlook at the application level, and you can extend Outlook’s functionality in the context of only the read-mode of the supported items (messages and appointments) in the user’s mailbox.
• You can specify custom business logic for a new item type.
• You can modify and add custom commands in the ribbon and Backstage view.
• You can display a custom form page or form region.
• You can detect events such as sending an item or modifying properties of an item.
• You can use add-ins on Outlook 2013 and Exchange Server 2013, as well as earlier versions of Outlook and Exchange. On the other hand, mail apps work with Outlook and Exchange starting in Outlook 2013 and Exchange Server 2013, but not earlier versions.

Conclusion

When you are considering creating a solution for Outlook, first verify whether the supported major features and objects of the apps for Office platform meet your needs. Develop your solution as a mail app, if possible, to take advantage of the platform’s support across Outlook clients over the desktop, tablet, and smartphone form factors. Note that there are still some circumstances where add-ins are more appropriate, and you should prioritize the goals of your solution before making a decision.

Further references

Apps for Office and mail apps

Build apps for Office

Mail apps for Outlook

JavaScript API for Office

Schema reference for apps for Office manifests

Legacy Outlook object model and APIs

Welcome to the Outlook 2013 developer reference

Outlook 2013 MAPI Reference

What’s new for Outlook 2013 developers

Welcome to the Outlook 2010 Primary Interop Assembly Reference

How To : Use the Content Query Web Part for SharePoint 2013 Search

Meeting client requirements with SharePoint often involves aggregating items somehow – often we want to display things like “all the overdue tasks across all finance sites”, or “navigation links to all of the subsites of this area” or “related items (e.g. tagged with the same term)” and so on. In SharePoint 2010 there have been two main ways of accomplishing this:

• Content Query web part
• Custom solution built on SPSiteDataQuery (site collection-scoped), SPQuery (list-scoped) or search API

To a lesser extent, using the search web parts as part of a custom solution may also have been an option. Regardless, it was common to need custom code to meet such requirements. Maybe we needed to add paging to the results, or we needed to use some value obtained dynamically through code (e.g. from the current site/current page/current user/something else) – several Codeplex solutions arose from this gap, and lots of lines of code were written.

SharePoint 2013 presents the Content Search web part as a new option – it’s capabilities mean that simply using the web part (with some front-end work to meet look and feel requirements) will meet many needs, without use of custom code. If you’re a developer, the following screenshot should give you a clue as to why code won’t be required too often (with one of my favorite options highlighted):

It’s incredibly powerful, and it’s a good idea to understand what it can do.

Understanding the deal with search-based solutions

As the name suggests, the Content Search web part is powered by SharePoint’s search function. As such, there are the following considerations:

• The CSWP can be configured to “see” items anywhere in SharePoint (potential advantage)
  • In contrast, the CQWP and related SPSiteDataQuery can only search within the current site collection – the site collection “boundary” is a factor
• Results shown are not guaranteed to be 100% up-to-date (potential disadvantage) 
  • Since a search crawl has to run before any content changes will be shown in search results (remember this can include titles, summaries, images and so on for pages/documents), if a user creates/edits an item it will not be shown immediately. This can be a critical point.
  • Furthermore, my understanding from a FAST engineer is that in SharePoint 2013 there is no longer any means of pushing a document directly into the search index – in previous FAST incarnations including FAST for SharePoint 2010, there were options such as docpush.exe for “proactively” add an item to the index, rather than waiting for the next search crawl.
  • That said, it should be possible to obtain much lower indexing latencies in SharePoint 2013 via the “Continuous Crawl’” capability. In most deployments, my guess would be that changes would be reflected within a few minutes at most if this is enabled (where previously you may have had an incremental crawl scheduled every 15, 30 or 60 minutes for a SharePoint sites content source.

Summary – if the functionality you are creating needs fully up-to-date results (e.g. a user has created/edited something and it needs to be immediately reflected in the site) then you will probably need to stick with the original approaches (i.e. a query-based rather than search-based solution).

Terminology – new concepts in SharePoint 2013 search

So if we’re going to build solutions built on SP2013 search, we need to have a basic understanding of some concepts – we’ll run into these time and time again:

Concept	My quick definition
Result Source	Like a search ‘scope’ in SP2007/SP2010, but on steroids. Rules are specified to say what the scope consists of – e.g. DOCUMENTS in my TEAM SITES area (constraining on content type and path in this example). Created centrally, or at the web level. Result Sources can be used in just about any search-related functionality, including the Content Search web part.
Query Rule	Like a ‘best bet’ on steroids. Ability to do specially formatted results at top of results list (e.g.Promoted Result) for highly-recommended content. In addition to Promoted Result, we can also do a Result Block (example could be a block of 5 image results within main list of text links). Another option is to Change the Ranked Results – i.e. put something at the top, promoteor demote something by 1-10 (previously known as a ‘boost’ in FAST) LOTS of flexibility in matching the user’s query, including regular expressions and matching terms in the Managed Metadata store.
Display Templates	A Display Template is a JavaScript template (similar to jQuery templates) which controls formatting – in the case of the CSWP, this effectively replaces the use of XSL for look and feel. There is a separate template to pick for the overall control and formatting of an individualitem. The .js files for the templates are stored in the ‘Content Web Parts’ subfolder of the Master Page Gallery. Side note – in the context of a search results page (rather than CSWP), a Display Template is associated with a Result Type (e.g. Word doc, wiki page, PowerPoint file etc.) and so we have granular control over how each is displayed (and when). Extremely cool.

So, lots of flexibility in the search infrastructure. Let’s see some of this in the context of the Content Search web part.

Configuring the Content Search web part

There are two main aspects to this:

• Displaying the right items (Search Criteria)
• Look and feel (Display Templates)

In terms of the search criteria, there is enormous flexibility in what the CSWP – and the underlying search capability – can do. For one thing, it’s possible to either directly configure the query entirely in the properties of this web part instance (e.g. show me all documents which meet criteria X), and/or start from a pre-existing Result Source to do some of the filtering. Combining the approaches will be fairly common – an example could be “search only on wiki pages” (an OOTB Result Source) but only show items tagged with X (this defined directly in the CSWP properties).

Interestingly, configuring a centralized Result Source and a Content Search web part on a page are very similar, even though it would seem some sort of “reusable scope” and a web part are very different things in SharePoint. The overlap comes because underneath both there is a search query which does the work of isolating the desired results – indeed, as we’ll see later the same “Query Builder” UI is used in both places (with a couple of minor differences). So, if you’ve learnt how to configure a CSWP you’ve essentially also learned how to create  a custom Result Source.

 

Configuring the web part

The first thing to understand is that the Content Search web part appears in different guises in the web part gallery. The ‘main’ web part is in the ‘Content Rollup’ category:

But there are also many pre-configured versions available, each of which finds a specific type of content. This is great for end-users who don’t necessarily think in terms of needing a ‘Content Search’ web part:

And just to prove the point, the web parts above correspond to the following .webpart definition files in the Web Part Gallery:

Once the web part has been added to the page, it can be configured by it’s tool pane. The main configuration item is the query to use, and this can be started by clicking the ‘Change query’ button:

This opens the “’Build Your Query” dialog – this has tabs labeled BASICS, REFINERS, SORTING, SETTINGS and TEST. This thing is known (unsurprisingly) as the Query Builder – what you might not realize, is that it’s used in several places in SharePoint 2013:

• Configuring a Content Search web part (obviously)
• Creating a Result Source (specifically in the Query Transform section)
• Configuring a Search Results web part

There are some differences – for example, when configuring a Search Results web part there is no SORTING tab because this will be handled in the Result Source or the query. I’m going to talk about things from the perspective of the Content Search web part, but will call out any differences for the other usages – so hopefully by learning the CSWP, you also get to learn 75% of the search infrastructure.

BASICS tab – Quick Mode

Although the first tab is labeled ‘BASICS’, I’d say it’s actually the most involved – this is where the query itself is configured, and there is a ‘Quick Mode’ and ‘Advanced Mode’. You’ll also notice that – and let me just say I’d personally be willing to give the Product Manager for this feature A BIG HUG for this – that there’s a “live” results preview pane, permanently visible on the right-hand side of the Query Builder. This shows the first 10 results which would display from running the currently configured search against the current index, without the need to save the web part after each change:

Note that if you create your own query, then this preview pane is only able to show results when you are on the TEST tab. And we’ll talk about that towards the end.

Let’s now walk through the various configuration steps in here.

Select a query

In Quick Mode, the dropdown contains the Result Sources (see my definition above if you’ve forgotten already :)) which come out-of-the-box with SharePoint 2013 – one of these may provide a good foundation for what you need:

As you select a Result Source from the dropdown, other options may become available lower down. So if I want to find items matching a specific content type, I get this:

In fact, this option to restrict by content type appears for many of the pre-defined Result Sources, not just “Items matching a content type” – which makes sense, because it’s a common thing to include as a filter. Similarly, “Items matching a tag” and several other queries give this interface for selecting a tag to filter on:

And, happy days, if I specify the tag by typing one I get auto-complete to help me pick the term – this is a fully-fledged Managed Metadata input field. Consequently there’s also full validation of the terms you type-in (though this takes a few seconds to show), so if an author accidentally enters something which isn’t a known term, he/she should spot the mistake immediately:

Consider also that those middle options of using the navigation term associated with the current page is exactly what’s needed to build many types of ‘related items’ functionality – again, no code needed now.

Restrict results by app

In the next section, I can restrict the scope of the results to a particular location (e.g. the current site). This enables me to get something like the Content Query web part behavior of only searching within the current site collection if needed – because although we now have the power, it won’t always make sense to go across the entire farm 🙂

Add additional filters

In the next section I can supplement the query with any valid query text, e.g. a property filter. In this example, I’m adding a filter to only present items which werecreated by the current user:

Sort results

When we scope our query to a pre-defined Result Source (as we are here in the CSWP ‘Quick Mode’), then sorting is usually pre-defined at that level. The CSWP does give us the opportunity to override sorting based on based on some popularity ranking models (around most viewed/most clicked) instead though – expect proper wording to appear in this dropdown in the RTM version, but you get the idea: 

So what happens if none of the options presented so far do what you want? An example could be wanting to use an existing Result Source (e.g. ‘wiki pages’) but sort on Last Modified in descending order. Obviously the dropdown above does not allow that. We could create a custom Result Source and implement the query/sorting there, but that only really makes sense if we expect it to be re-used in multiple places.

In these cases, we can click into Advanced Mode (still on the BASICS tab).

BASICS tab – Advanced Mode

In Advanced Mode you basically get to specify the full query text yourself. In my mind, this is like building a solution with the search API in SP2007/SP2010 – I saw many custom solutions (and built several myself) which used the FullTextSqlQuery or KeywordQuery classes to find the right items. SharePoint 2013 makes it much easier to have this full control whilst still piggybacking onto the out-of-the-box web parts – meaning less work and more productivity.

When switching to the Advanced Mode, a couple of things become available:

• A SORTING tab (details later)
• Controls to help you build the query (which you’d previously do essentially by hand in earlier versions), with ‘Keyword filter’ and ‘Property filter’ options. These can be combined as you like, and the resulting query text appears in the textbox at the bottom:

Avoid custom code by using tokens

There are many tokens which can be used when building a query in this way – often you might want to pass something into the query, such as a URL (querystring) parameter, the value in a particular field on the page, and so on. Being able to do this unlocks a huge range of possibilities for building solutions. This is where the first image in this article comes from – here’s a reminder:

In summary, when using the Advanced Mode of the query builder you should be able to target just about any content in your SharePoint environment.

SORTING tab (Advanced Mode only)

In SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search, you could only sort by relevance/rank (the normal search engine approach) or date. FAST for SharePoint 2010 had more options (you could sort by a Managed Property). In SharePoint 2013, frankly the sort options alone are enough to blow your mind 🙂  If you don’t need anything specific around sorting then you can skip this bit, but if you do then here are your options:

First you can sort by way more things than just rank and date:

One thing to note there – I’m unclear as to what makes it into that ‘Sort by’ list and what does not. It’s not Managed Properties as far as I can tell, so although the list is long many options may not be hugely useful. Still, better than before.

Usefully, you can now do multi-level sorting (sort by this, then by that). The ‘Add sort level’ link in the image above adds another row, allowing me to do things like sorting by URL depth (so items higher up in the site hierarchy show at the top), and then by rank (that makes sense, because there’ll be lots of items at the same URL depth so I do need two levels of sorting):

Note that effectively what I’m doing here is building some sort of custom ranking model. This works great if I need something very specific on sorting, but also note SharePoint 2013 comes with several ranking models – the next section allows me to pick from these if I’ve left the ‘Sort by’ dropdown on ‘Rank’, unlike in the image above. This is because all these options are effectively different forms of rank – most are around People Search or popularity:

And for those occasions when the client is telling you that his/her strategic document really has to be on page 1 of the results (but not a Promoted Result/best bet), you have ‘Dynamic ordering’ – you can boost/demote results, including the option to promote to the top:

REFINERS tab

In the context of search, refiners are usually the links on the search engine’s results page (typically in the left nav) which allow the user to further filter the results. So if I do a search for “meeting minutes” and get lots of results, it would be nice to be able to filter by, say:

• Date range
• SharePoint site (since minutes might be stored in individual project sites)
• Author
• ..and so on

However, in the context of the Content Search web part, refiners actually allow you to do this filtering as part of the initial query. The REFINERS tab is effectively a convenience to you, the person configuring the web part – what happens is that a search is performed whilst in edit mode, and all relevant refiners (e.g. managed properties) are presented as available refiners. These can be selected and moved over to the right-hand list:

The effect of this is that a further filter is added to my query. In the example above, this may be easier than using a Property Filter on the BASICS tab – since there I have little support, I just select the property and type the value:

In the REFINERS tab, SharePoint is doing the search for me (as it’s configured so far), and only coming back with values which have been found in the returned results.

SETTINGS tab

The SETTINGS tab controls some high-level options for running the search:

Query rules

Since these can be defined at the parent site or search service, it could be the case that your CSWP gets affected by one of these. As the radio button shows, this can be overridden, but consider that some types of Query Rules may not have an effect anyway – as a reminder (from the table at the beginning), a Query Rule can either:

• Add a promoted result
• Add a result block
• Change the ranked results somehow (by modifying the query)

Out of these 3 actions, 1.5 of them could affect the results of a ‘default’ CSWP. This can be summarized:

Query Rule Action	Will affect CSWP results?
Add a promoted result	Not by default. When a search runs in SharePoint, multiple result sets are returned (e.g. ‘main results’, ‘best bet results’ and so on – in SP2013, the real names for these are ‘RelevantResults’, ‘SpecialTermResults’, ‘PersonalFavoriteResults’ and ‘RefinementResults’.). Although a CSWP can be configured to show any table, the default is ‘RelevantResults’ – and a promoted result gets added to ‘SpecialTermResults’.
Add a result block	Yes if result block is configured to show ‘ranked within core results’ (the default), rather than ‘shown above core results’.
Change ranked results	Yes.

For completeness, here’s the place in the CSWP where you select which search result set to use (e.g. if you want to switch from the default of ‘RelevantResults’:

Options in the Results Table dropdown (shown to the left):

URL rewriting

This one is fairly simple – if results are being returned from a catalog which is using “friendly” URLs, then the CSWP can override this to use the original URLs. It may not always make sense to use rewritten URLs in aggregations outside of the catalog pages, especially if you’ve implemented anything funky there.

Loading behavior

This is useful – specify whether the CSWP web part instance should load in the main page load (default) or in an AJAX manner after the main page has finished. Considering that a CSWP could either be the centerpiece of your landing page or merely some page footer navigation, it’s nice to be able to prioritize in this way.

Priority

Similarly, we can actually specify High, Medium or Low priority for each CSWP instance we use – great for the different usages we will have, although as per the description, note this only has any effect if the search service is overloaded.

TEST tab

The TEST tab is hugely useful – it provides you the ability:

• To see the underlying query text (in Keyword Query Language [KQL]) which has been generated (though it must be edited in other tabs)
• To see the preview when you are defining a query yourself (the preview pane will be empty on other tabs in this scenario)

Which is all great, but at first glance it’s easy to miss some extra functionality – if the ‘Show more’ link is clicked, other information becomes visible including details on any refiners and Query Rules which have been applied. So below I can see that a custom Query Rule I created has indeed been used, so there’s no guesswork on (for example) whether a certain item is actually being promoted or not:

Sidenote – listing items from ONE site/list/library with the Content Search web part

Worthy of a quick note – if all you need to do is roll-up content from one list/library, then you can do this with the CSWP – in the query, simply restrict the search using PATH:[URL to document library]. The Query Builder UI helps you do this by providing the ‘Restrict by app’ area:

N.B. note that one potential gotcha here can be that you need ‘HTTP’ if your sites are browsed on HTTPS but crawled on HTTP (as in my case).

If you do want to filter by site/list/library, consider of course that the good ol’ Content Query web part will work just fine here, and you’ll get instant changes as content is changed. What you won’t have, is the Content Search Web Part’s ability to automatically use tokens in the query (e.g. value of current navigation category, value from current user’s profile etc.)

Summary

The Content Search web part is a great tool in the SharePoint consultant’s box of tricks. Configuration may prove quite simple for some scenarios, but there is also huge amount of flexibility and so a certain degree of complexity comes with that. Many advanced scenarios which make use SP2013 search capabilities (such as Result Sources, Query Rules, promoted results and so on) will be possible – knowing the details will help you identify whether the CSWP can be the answer to a particular problem or not.

COMING SOON – The “User Poll” Web Part for SharePoint 2010 & 2013

The User Poll Web Part provides your SharePoint environment with a set of web parts to allow your end users to create simple polls. It does this without the hassle of the standard SharePoint surveys which is not intended to create a simple 1 question poll.

The User Poll Web Part is a poll web part for SharePoint and it allows site users to quickly create polls anywhere in the Site Collection. The poll Web Part is designed to provide a user friendly interface: Important settings and actions are available from within the Web Part.

There is no direct need to work with the SharePoint Web Part setting menu and poll data is managed from normal SharePoint lists. Administrators can manage and keep track of all created polls from a centralized list.

A standard SharePoint installation also comes with a polling mechanism as part of the Survey Lists, but these surveys are complicated and require quite some time to configure.

The The User Poll Web Part allows users to setup a single topic poll within a few minutes.

The roadmap for the project is provided below.

Basic functionality

• Poll settings are configured directly from the web part display or SharePoint lists
• Publish and unpublish functionality

 

Project road map:

• Release production build of The User Poll Web Part 2013
• Automated security management on the poll response and answer list
• Result view only web part
• Add multiple HTML5 chart options (currently only horizontal bar)
• Documentation

Contact me at tomas.floyd@outlook.com!!

https://sharepointsamurai.wordpress.com/

Your favourite Apps showcased here by SharePoint Samurai Studios will be available for use/download in App Stores Soon!!

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SharePoint Development roles urgently needs to be filled at MS Gold Partner – Contact me now for more information (Sorry, No recruiters, i am filling private positions)

Senior SharePoint Developers needed urgently for MS Gold Partner in Sandton/Bryanston :

3 – 5 years of development experience.

2 year experience in SharePoint.

3 years experience in C#.

A minimum of 3 years experience in Visual Studio .NET 2005 – 2008.

A minimum of 3 years experience in ASP.NET , HTML web development.

A minimum of 3 years experience with Javascript.

A minimum of 3 years experience with Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.

A minimum of 3 years experience in relational database design and implementation with SQL Server
Advantageous (nice-to-have):

• Windows SharePoint Server.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
• BizTalk
• Web Analytics
• Microsoft CRM
• K2

Various Senior .Net Developet Positions available at MS Gold Partner and Part of the Britehouse Group! Contact me now! (Sorry. No recruiters – I am filling private positions)

Required (not-negotiable):

·         A minimum of 4 years experience developing code in C# and / or VB.NET and ASP.NET

·         A minimum of 48 months Visual Studio 2005 / 2006 and / or 2008 experience.

·         A minimum of 48 months Transact-SQL (Stored procedures, views and triggers) experience.

·         A minimum of 48 months relational database design implementation using MS SQL Server 2000 / 2005 and / or 2008 experience.

·         A minimum of 48 months HTML experience.

·         A minimum of 48 months Javascript experience.

·         5 years experience of leading a development team.

·         Proficiency in technical architecture and high-level design, as well as test framework design and implementation.

Senior Developers must be able to perform as a Tech-Lead developers with the following tasks:

·         Technical lead for development, design and implementation of .NET based solutions as part of the projects team.

·         Collaborate with Developers, Account Managers and Project Managers.

·         Estimate development tasks and execute well on project schedules.
·         Interact with clients to create requirement specifications for projects.
·          Innovate new solutions and keep up with new emerging technologies.

·         Mentoring of other developers.
Advantageous (nice-to-have):

·         3 years computer science degree or equivalent.

Windows SharePoint Server.
·        
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
·        
BizTalk.
·        
Microsoft CRM.
·        
Experience in web analytics.

New “Filter My ListView” SharePoint Web Part and App now available for SP 2010 & 2013 On-premise and Office 365!!

What is it?

The “Filter My ListView” Web Part / App is a SharePoint WebPart enables you to create custom filter to find information in SharePoint list or document library.

Why do you need it?

In working with SharePoint and with large lists or document libraries containing 100K+ items, users frequently found that there is no usable tool for filtering data.

SharePoint let us create views, but their functionality doesn’t meet the requirements of users. And most popular reason is this: list view is static and users can’t modify it on the fly.

On the other hand the “Filter My List” web part may filter data representing in the current view’s columns. But user can’t apply multiple filter to list and others (date range, filter criteria, …).

All this leads to the fact that we have to have custom solution this solving these limitations.

Usage

The “Filter My ListView” Web Part / App is a simple to use SharePoint list view filter. It enables your to create custom filter form, composed from all list fields (not only fields containing in current list view).

Supported field types

• Simple text

jQuery UI is used for using autocomplete!

• Text with options enables select filtering type

• Date

• DateRange

• Boolean

• DropDown list represents unique values of field

• User or Group

• Taxonomy Term Picker

• Multi-select CheckBoxList

The “Filter My ListView” Web Part / App builds a filter form using different types of controls:

• TextBox. “Contains” criteria filter
• TextBox with autocomplete
• TextBox with options. Allows user to choose filter criteria that can be one of these:
  • Equals
  • Not equals
  • Contains
  • Begins with
• Date
• Date Range
• DropDownList
• DropDownList with multiple selection
• People picker
• MetaData picker

Relation between field type and supported filter types is represented in this matrix:

Contact me now through my blog, https://sharepointsamurai.wordpress.com or at tomas.floyd@outlook.com for this and more SharePoint and Office 365 custom developed Web Parts and Apps

New Office 365 Tool available to help you re-design for the App Model

Learn about a tool that analyzes your SharePoint full-trust code solutions and Office add-ins and macros to help you redesign them for the app model. Security is important to us—your code remains private while using the tool.

The app model is a great tool that fully embraces the benefits of moving to the cloud, but migrating to the model can be a time-consuming task. SharePoint is a complex enterprise-level collaboration system, and custom solutions built on top of the SharePoint platform using full trust code don’t easily map to a cloud-based deployment. Similarly, Office client solutions – managed add-ins and VBA macros built on individual client object models – are widely deployed on desktops and need to be ported to work in the cloud. We understand that creating these solutions required a significant investment. We want to help you translate these solutions to cloud-friendly apps as painlessly as possible.

The SharePoint and VBA Code Analyzer—a tool to help you understand how you can refactor your SharePoint and Office client solutions to Office 365. Working with Mobilize.net, one of our long-standing partners, we’ve created a web portal where you can upload your SharePoint and Office client solutions and get a complete analysis of the existing code. We’ll provide guidance and recommendations on what level of effort needs to be invested to move them to the cloud, so you can start refactoring your custom business solutions as soon as possible.

“But, wait!” you think. “I can’t send my company’s code where external parties look at it!” No worries—we have put several security measures in place to prevent unauthorized access, and the code runs through a completely black-box process. The analysis is done with automated tools which only collect metadata about files, lines of code, ASP.NET application pages, web parts, libraries, workflows, and other platform-dependent objects. We then use this data to generate reports on how you can map your existing code to the new model.

The tool is also hosted behind a digital certificate-enabled site, which ensures that everything that goes across the wire to our black box process is encrypted.

Brand NEW “My Latest Documents” SharePoint Web Part and App released and available!!

In each SharePoint Team site where we have multiple document libraries, the requirement is always there to see what the latest changes are. Unfortunately the Microsoft web part allows only seeing the documents changed by myself.

To be able to have a solution for that, where you haven’t to be administrator or owner, I created a definition for a recent document web part. This can be deployed on Office 365, SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007 sites. On SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 the only use right needed, is to be able to modify the site.

The goal of the web part was:

• Show the 10 latest changed documents
• Show a more button that displays additional 40 documents
• Display the online status of users
• Display the correct date format of each site
• Display the name of the folder where the document is stored and a link to the folder.
• Get documents recursively from all sub sites

Example Image:

The following instructions explain in detail how you can activate it:

 

Activation SharePoint 2010

1. Edit your webpage and add a new web part
2. Select browse and upload a the webpart definition

   

3. Click Upload

   

4. Now, it’s a bit confusing, but you have to click again add new web part
5. The upload web part is now available in your web part menu and you can add it.

All this steps have to be done each time when you want to add the web part. To provide it for all site owners add it to the web part gallery.

Activation on Office 365

That means you have to upload it to your web part gallery:

After uploading the web part is available on your site.

You can simple edit the site, and click More Web Parts

Afterwardy you can find it in the Default Web Parts folder.

 

Contact me NOW at tomas.floyd@outlook.com to order this brand new Web Part and/or App

Create a new Search Service Application in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell

The search architecture in SharePoint 2013 has changed quite a bit when compared to SharePoint 2010. In fact the Search Service in SharePoint 2013 is completely overhauled. It is a combination of FAST Search and SharePoint Search components.

As you can see the query and crawl topologies are merged into a single topology, simply called “Search topology”. Provisioning of the search service application creates 4 databases:

• SP2013_Enterprise_Search – This is a search administration database. It contains configuration and topology information

• SP2013_Enterprise_Search_AnalyticsReportingStore – This database stores the result of usage analysis

• SP2013_Enterprise_Search_CrawlStore – The crawl database contains detailed tracking and historical information about crawled items

• SP2013_Enterprise_Search_LinksStore – Stores the information extracted by the content processing component and also stores click-through information

# Create a new Search Service Application in SharePoint 2013

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Settings    $IndexLocation = “C:\Data\Search15Index” #Location must be empty, will be deleted during the process!     $SearchAppPoolName = “Search App Pool”     $SearchAppPoolAccountName = “Contoso\administrator”     $SearchServerName = (Get-ChildItem env:computername).value     $SearchServiceName = “Search15”     $SearchServiceProxyName = “Search15 Proxy”     $DatabaseName = “Search15_ADminDB”     Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Application Pool exists”     $SPAppPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity $SearchAppPoolName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$SPAppPool)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Application Pool”         $spAppPool = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name $SearchAppPoolName -Account $SearchAppPoolAccountName -Verbose     }

Start Services search service instance    Write-host “Start Search Service instances….”     Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance $SearchServerName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue     Start-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceInstance $SearchServerName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Service Application exists”    $ServiceApplication = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Identity $SearchServiceName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$ServiceApplication)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Service Application”         $ServiceApplication = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Partitioned -Name $SearchServiceName -ApplicationPool $spAppPool.Name  -DatabaseName $DatabaseName     }

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Service Application Proxy exists”    $Proxy = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -Identity $SearchServiceProxyName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$Proxy)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Service Application Proxy”         New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -Partitioned -Name $SearchServiceProxyName -SearchApplication $ServiceApplication     }

$ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology     Write-Host $ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology

Clone the default Topology (which is empty) and create a new one and then activate it    Write-Host “Configuring Search Component Topology….”     $clone = $ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology.Clone()     $SSI = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local     New-SPEnterpriseSearchAdminComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchContentProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchAnalyticsProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -LiteralPath $IndexLocation -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue    mkdir -Path $IndexLocation -Force

New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI -RootDirectory $IndexLocation    New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     $clone.Activate()

Write-host “Your search service application $SearchServiceName is now ready”

Update

To configure failover server(s) for Search DBs, use the following PowerShell:

Thanks to Marcel Jeanneau for sharing this!

#Admin Database   $ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication “Search Service Application”    Set-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication –Identity $ssa –FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Crawl Database   $CrawlDatabase0 = ([array]($ssa | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase))[0]    Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase -Identity $CrawlDatabase0 -SearchApplication $ssa -FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Links Database   $LinksDatabase0 = ([array]($ssa | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLinksDatabase))[0]     Set-SPEnterpriseSearchLinksDatabase -Identity $LinksDatabase0 -SearchApplication $ssa -FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Analytics database   $AnalyticsDB = Get-SPDatabase –Identity     $AnalyticsDB.AddFailOverInstance(“failover alias\instance”)    $AnalyticsDB.Update()

You can always change the default content access account using the following command:

$password = Read-Host –AsSecureString**********Set-SPEnterpriseSearchService -id “SSA name” –DefaultContentAccessAccountName Contoso\account –DefaultContentAccessAccountPassword $password

Look out for my Powershell Web Part and Google Analytics Web Part and App that is under Development and available soon for purchase!!

Provisioning Managed Metadata fields in Office 365 – Part 2: building WSP packages for a specific environment/tenancy

In the previous post I talked about how provisioning Managed Metadata fields is tricky for Office 365 (since developers cannot use server-side code to “hook-up” the field to the Term Store, like we can on-premises). I talked about the way we approach this, and in this post I’ll show the Visual Studio/MSBuild customisation we use to build WSPs specific to an Office 365 tenancy. Here’s how the articles relate to each other:

1. Provisioning Managed Metadata fields in Office 365 – dealing with multiple environments
2. Provisioning Managed Metadata fields in Office 365 – building WSP packages for a specific environment/tenancy [this article]

Using MSBuild/custom Project Configurations to build packages per Office 365 tenancy

Here’s what I came up with – it took quite a few long nights in the murky hall-of-mirrors world of “batching” in MSBuild, roughly 5 million discarded approaches and several new gray hairs. But finally, it works great for us:

We now have some custom project configurations which can be selected in Visual Studio:

So instead of just ‘Debug’ and ‘Release’ we are using:

• “CandCVM” – Content and Code (name of my employer) virtual machine. Used for when you are developing against your local VM rather than the cloud
• “DevTenancy” – the Office 365 tenancy we are using for DEV purposes
• “TestTenancy” – the Office 365 tenancy we are using for TEST purposes

Those are all the environments we need to worry about for now, but of course others will be needed eventually.

We also have an XML file in the VS project, which defines the Managed Metadata IDs for each environment – since we now only have to worry about the SspId, that’s the only value the file contains:

Once the project (or solution) configuration has been switched, we just build/publish the WSP to the filesystem as usual:

..and as you’d expect, we get the WSP(s) which will work against that environment:

What has happened, and how?

As the WSPs were being packaged, some custom MSBuild executed. What this does is:

• Finds the SspId_Replacements.xml file
• Reads the SspId value for the appropriate environment
• Performs a find/replace across all the of the XML files about to go into the package(s), and replaces the SspId value with the one read from the ‘replacements’ file

Notes:

1. Although it seems inefficient to look for an SspId and try to replace across *all* XML files (and it is), we do need to ensure that we catch:
   1. Managed Metadata field declarations (i.e. in elements.xml files)
   2. The section in schema.xml files (for list definitions) where the fields are duplicatedI did look at trying to constrain the search beyond just the .xml extension, but found this difficult in MSBuild. I was also mindful of the fact that a developer could choose to have a Feature elements file NOT named elements.xml 🙂 Fortunately the performance hit for us is negligible – the overall penalty in packaging for using this stuff (compared to a plain Debug or Release build) seems to be around 1-3 seconds – perfectly tolerable right now.
2. The replacement is XML-based (using XPath rather than string manipulation), so if you have XML comments nearby, this won’t trip up the replacement.

Benefit: integrating with Continuous Integration/automated build

One reason I wanted to implement in MSBuild is because I knew that it would be painless to use in a CI process. When implementing the build in TFS, we select the solutions/projects to build, and then define any custom Configurations we wish to use there also (i.e. in addition to developer machines). In our case, our CI builds deploy to our test tenancy:

We then make sure our build definition is using this Configuration (instead of Debug or Release):

Want to use this? Here’s the MSBuild..

If you think this could be useful to you, here are the details – essentially you need to edit your .csproj file, add the SspId_Replacements.xml file to your project and finally define the custom Configuration in Visual Studio. The sequence doesn’t matter, so long as all pieces are in place before you try a build. In team development, these steps need to be performed just once per VS project (e.g. by the lead developer).

Step 1 – add the custom MSBuild to your project:

Edit your .csproj file (each of them if you have multiple – the solution is currently “project-scoped”) to include this at the bottom:

** N.B. My newer code samples do not show in RSS Readers – click here for full article **

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

VSToolsPath)\SharePointTools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.SharePoint.targets” Condition=”‘$(VSToolsPath)’ != ”” /> <!– COB 15/08/2013: This next target does the work of replacing the SspId.. –> <Target Name=”AfterLayout” Condition=”$(Configuration) != ‘Debug’ AND $(Configuration) != ‘Release'”> <!– Set some variables.. –> <PropertyGroup> <ReplacementsFile>_Replacements\SspId_Replacements.xml </PropertyGroup> <!– Fetch the appropriate value from the environments.xml file.. –> ReplacementsFile)..” Importance=”high” /> <XmlPeek XmlInputPath=”$(ReplacementsFile)” Query=”Replacements/Environment[@Name=’$(Configuration)’]/SspId/text()”> FetchedSspIdValue” /> </XmlPeek> FetchedSspIdValue) from $(ReplacementsFile) file” Importance=”high” /> <!– Now make replacements.. –> <ItemGroup> <FilesForSspIdReplacement Include=”$(LayoutPath)**\*.xml”> </FilesForSspIdReplacement> </ItemGroup> <!– In elements.xml files containing field definitions.. –> <XmlPoke XmlInputPath=”%(FilesForSspIdReplacement.Identity)” Namespaces=”” Query=”x:Elements/x:Field/x:Customization/x:ArrayOfProperty/x:Property[x:Name=’SspId’]/x:Value” Value=”@(FetchedSspIdValue)” /> <!– ..and in list schema.xml files.. –> <XmlPoke XmlInputPath=”%(FilesForSspIdReplacement.Identity)” Namespaces=”” Query=”x:List/x:MetaData/x:Fields/x:Field/x:Customization/x:ArrayOfProperty/x:Property[x:Name=’SspId’]/x:Value” Value=”@(FetchedSspIdValue)” /> </Target>

view raw My.csproj.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Step 2 – add the XML file with your config values:

Add an XML file within your project at the path “_Replacements\SspId_Replacements.xml” (N.B. this is configurable, see the MSBuild above). Add in the XML shown above, substituting the relevant SspId(s) for your environment(s). If you don’t know where to find the SspId for your environment, my colleague Luis mentions that in his post.

Step 3 – define the custom Configurations in Visual Studio:

In Visual Studio, define a custom Configuration for each environment you need to build WSPs for. Start by going to Configuration Manager and selecting “New..”:

..then create the Configuration, ensuring the same name is used as specified in the XML file – these two need to match. You’ll generally want to copy the setting from “Release”:

Now close Configuration Manager – the implementation is complete.

Building packages

To create WSPs, use the Configuration dropdown to switch to the “TestTenancy” (or whatever label you used) build type – be careful that the Platform stays as “Any CPU” here, you may need to change it back if not. Then just right-click on the project in Solution Explorer and click “Package” as usual – you should then get a WSP package in which the SspId find/replace has occured. You can now test deploying this to your Office 365 tenancy which corresponds to this build type.

A note on requirements

Note that the MSBuild used here is not compatible with SP2010/Visual Studio 2010 (but that’s OK because the entire technique is not needed there). There is a dependency on .NET 4.0 for the XmlPeek/XmlPoke MSBuild activities which are used to update the XML files.

GoogleAnalytics Connect & Reports – Google Analytics Connector Web Part for SharePoint 2010

This is Web Part Solution for SharePoint 2010 allowing administrators to connect a SharePoint site to a Google Analytics account to get advanced Usage Reporting.

Installation

• stsadm -o addsolution -filename {[PATH]}\ConsultPoint.SharePoint.GoogleAnalyticsConnector.wsp
• stsadm -o deploysolution -name ConsultPoint.SharePoint.GoogleAnalyticsConnector.wsp -allowgacdeployment -immediate

Activate the feature on site collection level

• Activate the feature named ConsultPoint.SharePoint.GoogleAnalyticsConnector on site collection level

Configure your Google Analytics profile ID on site level

You can configure a profile ID by site, you can also inherits the settings from the parent site.
 

All your site’s pages will be connected to your Google Analytics.

Please note that there is 24h delay before yuo can see your statistics on Analytics

 Contact me at tomas.floyd@outlook.com for this Web Part and other custom Web Parts / Apps that are now available!!

My Subscriptions Alert – New SharePoint 2013 Web Part available

This web part shows the current logged in user what lists or libraries the user had subscribed for it.

It will show gold bell icon beside the list name; which means you subscribed for this list.

If there is silver colour bell beside the list name; this means you didn’t subscribe to this list. To subscribe, you can click the list name, it will popup the “New Alert” SharePoint OOB model dialog.

Also in this dialog you will have many options of when to receive alerts and on what changes exactly.

In the Tool Part of the Web Part, user can select the lists on current site that the user have permission to only to see it displayed in the web part to subscribe to it.

Below is screen shot:

Contact me at tomas.floyd@outlook.com for more information on this and other custom developed SharePoint Web Parts and Apps

FREE SharePoint App – Pictures gallery with cool JQuery animations and effects

Project Description

Galleriffic App is an app part for SharePoint 2013 to display a pictures gallery with cool JQuery animations and effects. This App is an open source tool distributed under MIT license by Olivier Carpentier and based on the excellent Galleriffic jquery extension by Trent Foley.

App Screenshots

 Galleriffic App part sample :

Administration page :

Download it now :

http://1drv.ms/1f1x4vJ

New “Spotlight On” Web Part Released and Available!!

The “Spotlight On..” Web Part selects a random entry from the specified Sharepoint Library and displays a picture, a title and an abstract of the selected person or item.
The Web Part can be used with Windows Sharepoint Services V3, MOSS 2007, Sharepoint 2010 and Sharepoint 2013.You can configure the following web part properties:

• the Sharepoint Library

• the List fields corresponding to the picture, title, abstract and detail link

• enable or suppress the “Details..” URL.

• show a new entry every day or on every page refresh

This allows you to display random data contained in any Sharepoint List by specifying the desired Sharepoint List name and the desired list column names.

 Instructions:

1. download the Spotlight On Web Part Installation Instructions (PDF file, see above)
2. either install the web part manually or deploy the feature to your server/farm as described in the instructions.
3. Create a new Sharepoint Picture Library if you do not intend to use an existing Picture Library.
   If you decide to create a new Sharepoint list to store the Spotlight entries, create a new Sharepoint Picture Library anywhere in the Sharepoint site collection (the web part is able to access any picture library within the site collection).
   The list needs the following columns to hold the entries:
   – Title
   – Abstract
   – optional Detail Link URL

1. You also can use a Sharepoint List (as opposed to a picture library). In this case please add the pictures as list attachments.
2. Configure the following relevant Web Part properties in the Web Part Editor “Miscellaneous” pane section as needed:
   

   Site Name: Enter the name of the site that contains the Spotlight Picture Library: – leave this field empty if the Library is in the current site (eg. the Web Part is placed in the same site) – Enter a “/” character if the Library is contained in the top site – Enter a path if the Library is in a subsite of the current site (eg. in the form of “current site/subsite”) List Name: Enter the desired Sharepoint Picture Library View Name: Optionally enter the desired List View of the list specified above. A List View allows you to specify specific data filtering and sorting. Leave this field empty if you want to use the List default view. Title Field Name: Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the titles (Default=”Title”) Abstract Field Name: Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the abstracts (Default=”Abstract”)

You can alternatively specify a “Field Template” by entering the desired Library fields (surrounded by curly braces). You can specify HTML tags and CSS styles to freely format the text.

Example:

<strong>{JobTitle}</strong>
<br>{Description}

5px; margin-top:5px; background-color:orange”>

<strong>Schools:</strong><br>
{Bio}
</div>

• The above example assumes that the Sharepoint Library includes a “JobTitle”, a “Description” and a “Bio” column.
• Details URL Field Name: (optional) Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the Detail page links (Default=”DetailURL”). Leave this field empty if you don’t want to provide a detail link.
  If you want to automatically link to the corresponding Sharepoint List Detail View page, enter the keyword “DetailView” into this field.
  If you want to automatically link to the corresponding user’s “MySite” page, enter the keyword “MySite” into this field.
• Open Details Link in new window: opens the link in a new browser window.
• Details Caption: allows to localize the “Details..” link displayed in the lower right part of the web part (if a “Details” link is specified).
• Text Layout: specify the placing of the Text with respect to the Image:
  – Right
  – Wrap
  – Bottom
  – Left
  – WrapLeft
• Image Height: specify the image height in pixels. Enter “0” if you want to use the default picture size.
• Default User Image: (optional) specify a default user picture (if there is no user picture available) by entering a relative URL to the image

• Example:
  /yoursite/yourPictureLibrary/yourDefaultUser.jpg
  
• Title CSS Style: enter optional CSS styles to format the Title (default: bold)
• Text CSS Style:  enter optional CSS styles to format the Body Text (default: none)
• Background Color (optional):  To set the desired Web Part Background color, enter either a HTML color name (as eg. “yellow”) or a hexadecimal RGB color value (as eg. “#ffcc33”). Leave this field empty if you don’t want to use a specific background color.
• Show new Entry: shows a new entry depending on the below setting:
  – always (a new entry is displayed on every page refresh)
  – every Day
  – every Week
  – every Month
  – top Entry (the most recently added entry unless a View is used with a specific custom sorting order)
• Show specific Entry: optionally enter the List ID of the List Item to be displayed.
• Nbr. of Items to show: optionally enter two ore more items to be displayed side by side:
• Center Web Part: horizontally centers the Web Part within the available space.
• License Key: enter your Product License Key (as supplied after purchase of the “Spotlight On Web Part” license key).
  Leave this field empty if you are using the free 30 day evaluation version. You can check the evaluation period via the web part configuration pane.

Contact me now on tomas.floyd@outlook.com to get o trial/copy of this Web Part (Also available as an Apo)

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My Resume – Senior C#, SharePoint Developer with 9 years experience – In the job market

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How to use “Accordion” JQuery plug-in on SharePoint 2013

For this solution created by 2 steps:

• Create a link list in SharePoint Site and call Script Editor to generate the list View using SharePoint COM Script/Jquery.
• Create a App solutions (SharePoint-Hosted) that creates a custom Link List and integrate a View with the created SharePoint COM Script/Jquery

• Create a Client Web Part (Host Web) to List the View using the Script List using REST

Expected Result:

First Step:

Create the Script using Jquery(Accordion)/COM to call List Data in SharePoint Site

Add Custom View using Jquery and SharePoint Site

For this example have selected the “Accordion” Jquery plug-in example to apply in the SharePoint 2013 enviroment, this example will be use to display List data and automatic sort order using Drag and Drop.

http://jqueryui.com/accordion/

Access to your SharePoint Site and add a “Links App”, include the following column “OrderLink” as Numeric and default value ‘0’.

The Second step will be add a Script Editor in the Home Page and include the script to create our new View.

Increase the Textbox in Script Editor

One question people make about the Script Editor and how small it is, well this script is normally use from external references for example:“Embeded Youtube Videos” or references to embed Office Documents.

If you want to increase height because you are adding a very extensive script can recomend to include in the Snippet a style for the class “.ms-rte-embeddialog-textarea” and increase the height, for this example was increase to 500px.

PS:This is a example, my recomendation is to use a minify Javascript file and make a reference to him.

Include the Jquery reference files

To work with the “Accordion” Plug-in, some references needs to be made, for this case i added some JS in the SiteAssets Library, but for the support file change to the existing UI page.

Define the Look and Feel of the HTML that will be generated dynamically by JS and changed by the Accordion Plug-in.

Define the Method where will be call that changes the look and feel as “Accordion”.

The Property “ListID=’ListitemID’” will be very important when a item is deleted, the Jquery will delete the DIV Tag and will not be needed a refresh of the Page.

For this example have 2 Methods:

• Users will be able to expand and collapse items.
• User will be able to reorder the items if they have permissions

There are some variables that can be changed in order to response other List name, filter Column or row Limit.

You can download the file with all the Script in the following link.

PS: this code was made in 15 minutes and was not optimized.

After the inclusion of the code you should be able to add new items, edit, delete and reorder the position of the items in a more flexible way and the the final result should be something like this:

There is also the possibility to include the JS script code in the View to change the Out of the Box Look and Feel to our new View (needs to be made some changes, that will be shown in the app Solution).

Reoder of the Listitem

After you drag and drop the columns in the new View the  OrderLink will be update with the new Order like is shown in the following image. Step 2:

Create a SharePoint App to create new View with Jquery

The second part of this example is the creating of a SharePoint app call “Custom Links”, using “SharePoint-Host” as support to our application.

This app will create a link in the Main site call “Custom Links” where will redirect to our custom Support Application.

The first thing that we should do is to open and create our App for SharePoint 2013.

This Solution will include the following Main Files:

• Pages
  • WPReorder Web Part
  • WPReorder.ASPX
• SharePoint List
  • ListTemplate: 10000
  • Custom Action:ScriptLink :jquery-1.8.2.min.js
  • Custom Action:ScriptLink :jquery-ui.js
• Images
• Scripts
  • (OOB Visual Studio Files)
  • Jquery* (Files)
  • ReorderLinks.js
  • WPReorder.js
• AppManifest.xml

After the Project is created, Visual Studio 2012 will add some default files and pages that can be use to create our App.

For this example the AppManifest.xml was changed to change the Starting Page to our custom View

The second action will be create the Custom List call “ReorderLinks”.

After the Support files are created, you will be able to make some changes in the List definition and proportieslike adding fields.

One option the graphical option dont have is the definition of the Default Value for the Fields, for this example “OrderLink, for that you will need to change the Schema.xml file and include the following XML “0”.

Another option of the Visual Studio 2012 List Management is the definition of the Views and the fields to be Displayed.

Here is very useful to define which one should be the Default.

For this example was created 2 Views:

• All Items
• Reorder

One thing that should be done after the creation of the Views, it’s the option on how the View will be Display, for example you are able to use Javascript file to add your custom View “like the example bellow” or to use the .XSL to customize the Look and Feel of the View.

For this example i have define don’t want to use the OOB “main.xsl” but a custom JS file call “ReoderLinks”.

Another thing that was included in the Schema of the List was the inclusion of the Jquery support files to be accessible in the “SharePoint-Host” Site.

After the definition of the List, Views and support Files, we can start to create the code that will change the View “Reorder” Look and Feel.

SharePoint 2013 has new class that can be use to override the existing style and use the Context to access some List Content.

You can find a example in the following Microsoft Article.

This example is creating the HTML tags to include a custom CSS and create the new Look and Feel and include the Jquery plug-in “Accordion” in the New View.

Change Look and Feel of Custom View

The method to make the change is the Method CustomItem(ctx). This Method brings the Object ctx associated with the properties of the List, if you need to know some of the properties you can use “Chrome > Sources>Reoder.aspx”, this page gives a look of the ctx(List) properties.

Validate Permissions

This code will validate if the user has permission to edit the List content and more functionalities like add/Edit/Delete/reordering of the List.

Reordering of the Items

The next code will update the reordering of the List, with a new Method and my recomendation will be to use “SP.SOD.executeFunc” to ensure the SharePoint Client Object files are included in the Page.

By Default the Values are 0 after the Reordering using drag and drop will have a different ordering.

Delete of Item

For the Delete Action was made a Jquery function to delete DIV Tag of the ListItemID.

Change the View

Since we are working over a List we are able to select the Ribbon option associated with the List and change the View to a different View.

Create a Client Web Part

This Client Web Part will support to display the content of the “Reoder Link” from the “SharePoint-Host” to the Production “SharePoint Site” using a Iframe.

This Web Part will have the “Accordion” look and Feel but will not have administration actions, because it’s made in a Iframe.

The fist thing made in Visual Studio was to include a  Client Web Part Feature.

This feature will create a ASPX page, with some OOB HTMl Tag and references.

for this example was included a new File “WPReoder.js” where will be the Script do display the content and the DIV Tag associated with the accordion.

For the Client Web Part example was made some change in the Way to call the Data from the Jquery Call using REST Url.

Using fiddler you can use to make calls to REST Url and validate the content of the JSON and properties Data that returns.

For the output was created a Object Data where all Items are listed and generate the necessary tags.

After our SharePoint App is deployed, you will be able to add the App Part in your Production SharePoint Page as a “App part” call Reoder Links.

After you add the Web Part will make the call to “ReoderLinks” List using Cross-Domain code and display the data in the Production SharePoint Site.

The solution can be acessible in the following link.

There are a lot of things talk in the article that needs to be aware when you are using SharePoint Apps but didn’t have time to explain.

Script insertion via a Page Viewer Web Part

What is a Page Viewer Web Part?

A PVWP allows you to embed in your page another Web Page. Technically, a PVWP doesn’t do much, it is just a wrapper for a html iframe element.

iframes have a bad reputation. One of the main reason is that people often confuse them with frames. An excerpt from the MDN page:

Using the <frame> element is not encouraged because of certain disadvantages such as performance problems and lack of accessibility for users with screen readers. Instead of the <frame> element, <iframe> may be preferred.

As a matter of fact, iframes are enjoying a surge in popularity in modern Web design. They serve as building blocks in modular pages (several SharePoint Web Parts rely on iframes), and are a key component of application pages (for example on Twitter, Facebook or with Disqus). I would expect them to become even more popular once the new iframe html5 attributes become widely available.

Note: besides linking to Web pages, the PVWP also has options to display folders or file content.

How is this similar to the CEWP?

As explained in my old post, a CEWP allows you to embed, via its content link property, Web content (html, stylesheets or scripts) in your page. A PVWP acts in a similar way, except that the linked file is a whole Web page, instead of a fragment stored in a text file.

But this means two different pages?

Right. With a CEWP, the code fragment becomes part of the host page. With a PVWP, the code remains in its own page. That said, it doesn’t mean that the two pages cannot communicate, within the boundaries allowed by the same origin policy. In particular, an iframe can access and modify its host page. In the basic example shown below, the code in the iframe accesses the parent body to change its background color.

Any real life example to share?

Sure! In the past few months, I published in this blog several demos from my SPELL library. SPELL is built to work in dual mode: either “inline” for direct insertion within a page (CEWP, Master Page, etc.), or “app” for inclusion in an iframe. For example, the process navigation showcased in this blog post is inserted via a PVWP. Same for its sibling featuring a button navigation. Other solutions like the SPELL Tabs or mini-BI work exactly the same way.

Why use a PVWP rather than a CEWP?

That’s a good question. While other environments have a good case for iframed scripts, we SharePoint users can already rely on the CEWP to link to html, css and JavaScript. Still, I see a couple benefits when using a PVWP.

1/ Sandbox

Because the iframe loads another page, this provides a clear separation between the host page and the iframe content. The sandboxed environment avoids code conflicts. This can be for example useful:

• for charting apps, to make sure that the styles of the main page don’t interfere with the styles of the chart itself.
• for scripting: if your app requires a specific jQuery version, you can run it within the iframe, without having to worry about the main page running a different version.

2/ Standalone

One constraint with Web Parts is that they have to live in a page. Picture a SharePoint dashboard: you view it as a whole, with no easy option to isolate a specific chart. With a PVWP, the chart can be viewed either embedded in the dashboard or directly in its underlying page. This scenario is showcased in this post: with read only permissions on my site, you cannot build a SharePoint dashboard page, but you can still interact with the individual chart page.

Even better, standalone pages work great with SharePoint dialogs. Iframing is actually the technique SharePoint relies on with forms: when you open a new, display or edit form in a dialog, you are simply opening newform.aspx, dispform.aspx or editform.aspx in an iframe! Do I have a dialog example with SPELL? Thanks for asking You’ll find it here. Working with standalone pages allows to pile up dialogs and create the drill-down effect.

3/ Asynchronous load

Because the host page and the iframe are two different pages, the browser can load them in parallel, so this “should” result in better performance. With a CEWP, the content becomes part of the host page and execution will follow the page flow.

4/ Links across site collections

The CEWP allows you to link to an external file, but only within a same site collection. An iframe doesn’t have such restrictions, so a single application page stored in SharePoint can be reused across site collections.

5/ Storage of parameters

This is a technique I use with the SPELL library – not really standard but let me explain it anyway.

Because the script running in the iframe can access its own url, this url becomes a place where you can store parameters. For example the URL for the SPELL Tabs will look like this:

Tabs.aspx#css.activeBackground=orange;css.inactiveBackground=blue;css.hoverBackground=lightblue

For cascading dropdowns, the url would be for example:

CascadingSelect.aspx#form.parentLabel=State;form.childLabel=City;source.listName=Locations;source.parentField.DisplayName=State

You might find the above urls intimidating, but if you look at SharePoint urls they actually work in a similar fashion. The point is: if you used a CEWP, you’d need to store one snippet of code for each cascading dropdown you implement. With the above method, one single page called CascadingSelect.aspx can be reused across all site collections!

Note:  In practice the SPELL library includes editors, the above paths are not built manually.

Of course, iframes also have some drawbacks. The asynchronous load complicates the relationship between the iframed content and the parent’s content. The sandbox means that if the same code is needed in both the host page and the iframe, locally you have to load it twice (or find a trick…). Both the CEWP and the PVWP have their place in SharePoint design!

Brand new Web Part Available!! Script Box WebPart for SharePoint…

This Script Box WebPart (Not the OTB Script Editor WebPart) provides easy options to refer scripts and CSS in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010 Applications. Apart from using it as a WebPart, this can also be used as a delegate control to inject scripts and CSS into SharePoint Pages without editing the pages.

Why not OTB Script Editor WebPart?

The above would be the first question that might crop in mind while having a look at the title of this blog post. This SharePoint Frontier Script Box web part differs from OTB Script Editor in following aspects.

1. Provides option to inject Scripts and CSS without editing the Page

2. All scripts and CSS are controlled by a configuration list, which enables to manage assets across application at ease.

3. Script Box can also be added as WebPart to a page.

4. Binding script and CSS are based on reference keys rather than actual content. Actual content is stored in a SharePoint List and value provided in title column is used as the key to inject the actual content.

5. Allows tokens for site and site collection URL in script and CSS file path.

6. Once added to a Page, further changes to the list of scripts and CSS to be referred on that page can be done without editing that page.

Deployment and Configuration

1. Download the WSP solution from the bottom of the blog post and deploy it in your SharePoint environment.

2. Once deployed, this will add a Site Collection scoped Feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” and a Site scoped feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box Delegate”

3. Activation of “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” feature provisions a Web Part named “SCRIPT BOX”. This WebPart can be used in a page to inject scripts and CSS.

4. Activation of “SharePoint Frontier Script Box Delegate” creates a SharePoint List named “Script Box Params”. This list acts a reference repository and has reference to the actual content that has to be injected into the page

5. To add reference to scripts, open the “Site Box Params” list and click “Add new item” .

6. The below table explains the columns available in “Site Box Params” list and its usage

Sl.No	Column Name	Usage	Example
1	Title	Used as Key in WebPart based script reference. Does not have any impact on Header based rendering	Global AssetsSite Assets
2	Target	Decides the rendering type.	Header / WebPart
3	Content	Accepts reference to JS, CSS file, JS script block, CSS block. Also accepts [SITE_URL] and [SITE_COLLECTION_URL] as tokens in reference URLs.	// <!–[CDATA[ javascript” src=”[SITE_COLLECTION_URL]/Style Library/js/sfs.core.js”> // ]]>
4	IsActive	If set as false, content associated with that key won’t be considered for injecting into the page	Yes /No

Configuring WebPart based Script Injection

1. WebPart based rendering mode requires Site Collection scoped Feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” to be activated.

2. Add a new item to the “Script Box Params” list (created on activation of feature) with target set to “WebPart” and set the value for title field as “Site Assets” and add a script or link element to content column(refer image above).

3. Edit the page which you would like to inject the script that you have referenced in “Script Box Params” list.

4. Add the WebPart named “Script Box” located under the category “SharePoint Frontier” to the page.

5. Edit the Web Part and set the Script ID property to “Site Assets” (The value for Title column provided in Script Box Params List)

6. Enable “Refer Script From Root Site”, if you would like to re-use the “Script Box Params” list located in root site of the site collection rather than pointing to list available in current web.

Configuring Delegate based Script Injection

This method injects Scripts and CSS into page header via additionalpageheader delegate control. Any item added to the “Script Box Params” list in the current web with target type set to “Header” is injected into page header section. This method does not require the page to be edited to inject the content , as the script injection is performed via delegate control

Note: This mode uses delegate control to inject script into page header. So this option will not work in Office 365 and Sandbox based deployments as Sandbox solutions does not support delegate controls.

Result as seen in FireBug console of FireFox

This Script Box WebPart (Not the OTB Script Editor WebPart) provides easy options to refer scripts and CSS in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2010 Applications. Apart from using it as a WebPart, this can also be used as a delegate control to inject scripts and CSS into SharePoint Pages without editing the pages.

Why not OTB Script Editor WebPart?

The above would be the first question that might crop in mind while having a look at the title of this blog post. This SharePoint Frontier Script Box web part differs from OTB Script Editor in following aspects.

1. Provides option to inject Scripts and CSS without editing the Page

2. All scripts and CSS are controlled by a configuration list, which enables to manage assets across application at ease.

3. Script Box can also be added as WebPart to a page.

4. Binding script and CSS are based on reference keys rather than actual content. Actual content is stored in a SharePoint List and value provided in title column is used as the key to inject the actual content.

5. Allows tokens for site and site collection URL in script and CSS file path.

6. Once added to a Page, further changes to the list of scripts and CSS to be referred on that page can be done without editing that page.

Deployment and Configuration

1. Download the WSP solution from the bottom of the blog post and deploy it in your SharePoint environment.

2. Once deployed, this will add a Site Collection scoped Feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” and a Site scoped feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box Delegate”

3. Activation of “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” feature provisions a Web Part named “SCRIPT BOX”. This WebPart can be used in a page to inject scripts and CSS.

4. Activation of “SharePoint Frontier Script Box Delegate” creates a SharePoint List named “Script Box Params”. This list acts a reference repository and has reference to the actual content that has to be injected into the page

5. To add reference to scripts, open the “Site Box Params” list and click “Add new item” .

6. The below table explains the columns available in “Site Box Params” list and its usage

Sl.No	Column Name	Usage	Example
1	Title	Used as Key in WebPart based script reference. Does not have any impact on Header based rendering	Global AssetsSite Assets
2	Target	Decides the rendering type.	Header / WebPart
3	Content	Accepts reference to JS, CSS file, JS script block, CSS block. Also accepts [SITE_URL] and [SITE_COLLECTION_URL] as tokens in reference URLs.	// <!–[CDATA[ javascript” src=”[SITE_COLLECTION_URL]/Style Library/js/sfs.core.js”> // ]]>
4	IsActive	If set as false, content associated with that key won’t be considered for injecting into the page	Yes /No

Configuring WebPart based Script Injection

1. WebPart based rendering mode requires Site Collection scoped Feature named “SharePoint Frontier Script Box WebPart” to be activated.

2. Add a new item to the “Script Box Params” list (created on activation of feature) with target set to “WebPart” and set the value for title field as “Site Assets” and add a script or link element to content column(refer image above).

3. Edit the page which you would like to inject the script that you have referenced in “Script Box Params” list.

4. Add the WebPart named “Script Box” located under the category “SharePoint Frontier” to the page.

5. Edit the Web Part and set the Script ID property to “Site Assets” (The value for Title column provided in Script Box Params List)

6. Enable “Refer Script From Root Site”, if you would like to re-use the “Script Box Params” list located in root site of the site collection rather than pointing to list available in current web.

Configuring Delegate based Script Injection

This method injects Scripts and CSS into page header via additionalpageheader delegate control. Any item added to the “Script Box Params” list in the current web with target type set to “Header” is injected into page header section. This method does not require the page to be edited to inject the content , as the script injection is performed via delegate control

Note: This mode uses delegate control to inject script into page header. So this option will not work in Office 365 and Sandbox based deployments as Sandbox solutions does not support delegate controls.

Result as seen in FireBug console of FireFox

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Loading SharePoint Web Parts Contents Asynchronously Using Update Panel and Ajax – Free Web Part Template

Download Asynchronous Web Part with Ajax Update Panel

Web parts that retrieve data from across the network without asynchronous processing, our web parts will have serious limitations when it comes to optimizing page response.

For achieving the optimization factor in page response you need to use the asynchronous processing support provided by the ASP.NET Framework.

For implementing asynchronous in our web parts, we have more than one way

1-      Using CallBackEventHandler interface.

2-      Using ASP.NET AJAX.

Here, we will implement asynchronous using update panel and AJAX. Firstly, our example is a web part connects to YAHOO! Finance web service for retrieving data about stock exchange.

Prerequisites

1-      Visual Studio 2010.

2-      SharePoint Server 2010.

Creating Stock exchange Web Part

As we said above our web part will connect to internet web service which will have limitations in page response so for avoiding this limitation we need to load

Here, for optimizing page response we want to load the entire page firstly then load all of the important parts on the page first and then load the slower loading part(s) later. While the page is loading, placeholders are displayed to indicate that additional content is coming. After the page loads, the content for the placeholders is retrieved and displayed asynchronously.

 Here, we  create two views, one for displaying loading process with an animated image (GIF) as previous screen shot and the second display the content of the web part as the following

Steps:-

1-      Create New Project with Visual Studio 2010.

2-      Select Visual Web Part project Template.

3-      Open user control file.

4-      Add to user control, Update panel from toolbox.

5-      Now, we create the first view which represents Loading Process

6-      Create the second view which represents content view, this view contains fields for each of Stock Symbol, Date, Index Value, and image for value.

7-      Add ASP timer control for doing the post back to start connecting to remote web service for retrieving the Stock Exchange value.

8-      In The ASP:Timer’s OnTick event — triggered 1ms after the page loads — triggers the routine to load Stock Exchange

This our web part logic

Full Code Shot:-

New “Focus On…” Web Part Released!!

The “Focus On…” Web Part selects a random entry from the specified Sharepoint Library and displays a picture, a title and an         abstract of the selected person or item.

The Web Part can be used with Windows Sharepoint Services V3, MOSS 2007, Sharepoint 2010 and Sharepoint 2013.

You can configure the following web part properties:

• the Sharepoint Library
• the List fields corresponding to the picture, title, abstract and detail link
• enable or suppress the “Details..” URL.
• show a new entry every day or on every page refresh

This allows you to display random data contained in any Sharepoint List by specifying the desired Sharepoint List name and the desired list column names.

How to use :

Create a new Sharepoint Picture Library if you do not intend to use an existing Picture Library.
If you decide to create a new Sharepoint list to store the Spotlight entries, create a new Sharepoint Picture Library anywhere in the Sharepoint site collection (the web part is able to access any picture library within the site collection).
The list needs the following columns to hold the entries:
– Title
– Abstract
– optional Detail Link URL

Configure the following relevant Web Part properties in the Web Part Editor “Miscellaneous” pane section as needed:

• Site Name: Enter the name of the site that contains the Spotlight Picture Library:
  – leave this field empty if the Library is in the current site (eg. the Web Part is placed in the same site)
  – Enter a “/” character if the Library is contained in the top site
  – Enter a path if the Library is in a subsite of the current site (eg. in the form of “current site/subsite”)
• List Name: Enter the desired Sharepoint Picture Library
• View Name: Optionally enter the desired List View of the list specified above. A List View allows you to specify specific data filtering and sorting.
  Leave this field empty if you want to use the List default view.
• Title Field Name: Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the titles (Default=”Title”)
• Abstract Field Name: Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the abstracts (Default=”Abstract”)You can alternatively specify a “Field Template” by entering the desired Library fields (surrounded by curly braces). You can specify HTML tags and CSS styles to freely format the text.

• Example:
  <strong>{JobTitle}</strong>
  <br>{Description}
  

  5px; margin-top:5px; background-color:orange”>

  
  <strong>Schools:</strong><br>
  {Bio}
  </div>
  

  The above example assumes that the Sharepoint Library includes a “JobTitle”, a “Description” and a “Bio” column.

• Details URL Field Name: (optional) Enter the desired Library Column name that contains the Detail page links (Default=”DetailURL”). Leave this field empty if you don’t want to provide a detail link.
  If you want to automatically link to the corresponding Sharepoint List Detail View page, enter the keyword “DetailView” into this field.
  If you want to automatically link to the corresponding user’s “MySite” page, enter the keyword “MySite” into this field.

• Open Details Link in new window: opens the link in a new browser window.
• Details Caption: allows to localize the “Details..” link displayed in the lower right part of the web part (if a “Details” link is specified).
• Text Layout: specify the placing of the Text with respect to the Image:
  – Right
  – Wrap
  – Bottom
  – Left
  – WrapLeft

• Image Height: specify the image height in pixels. Enter “0” if you want to use the default picture size.

• Default User Image: (optional) specify a default user picture (if there is no user picture available) by entering a relative URL to the imageExample:
  /yoursite/yourPictureLibrary/yourDefaultUser.jpg
  
• Title CSS Style: enter optional CSS styles to format the Title (default: bold)

• Text CSS Style:  enter optional CSS styles to format the Body Text (default: none)

• Background Color (optional):  To set the desired Web Part Background color, enter either a HTML color name (as eg. “yellow”) or a hexadecimal RGB color value (as eg. “#ffcc33”). Leave this field empty if you don’t want to use a specific background color.

• Show new Entry: shows a new entry depending on the below setting:
  – always (a new entry is displayed on every page refresh)
  – every Day
  – every Week
  – every Month
  – top Entry (the most recently added entry unless a View is used with a specific custom sorting order)

• Show specific Entry: optionally enter the List ID of the List Item to be displayed.

• Nbr. of Items to show: optionally enter two ore more items to be displayed side by side:

• Center Web Part: horizontally centers the Web Part within the available space.

Contact me now for this awesome Web Part!

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Duet Enterprise – Creating and Deploying a Mobile Adapter Class for Business Data Action Web Parts

Learn how to create a mobile adapter class to display mobile views for Business Data Action Web Parts.

In Microsoft SharePoint 2010, mobile views are available for both the Business Data Builder Web Part and the Business Data Item Web Part. In the Starter Services site of Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, a mobile view is available for only the Business Data Item Web Part. You must define a mobile adapter class to make mobile views available for other Business Data Web Parts. This topic describes how to write a mobile adapter class for Business Data Action Web Parts.

Creating and Deploying a Mobile Adapter Class for Business Data Action Web Parts

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The procedures in this section describe how to create and deploy a mobile adapter class for displaying Business Data Action Web Parts.

The following are the basic steps to create and deploy a mobile adapter class:

1. Create a mobile adapter class for Business Data Action Web Parts.
2. Edit the compat.browser file.
3. Register your adapter as a safe control.

To create a mobile adapter class for Business Data Action Web Parts

1. In Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, create a new class library project named DuetMobileCustomization. Add references to the System.Web assembly and Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly.
2. Add a using statement for the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages namespace. Depending on the details of your adapter implementation, add using statements for other namespaces. Commonly, mobile adapters make calls to types in the System.Web.UI.MobileControls namespace, Microsoft.SharePoint namespace, and Microsoft.SharePoint.MobileControls namespace.
3. Add a class named WebPartClassMobileAdapter, where WebPartClass is a placeholder for the name of the Web Part that you are adapting. For example, if you are adapting the BusinessDataActionsWebPart, name the adapter class BusinessDataActionsWebPartMobileAdapter. This class should inherit from the WebPartMobileAdapter class.
4. Add a namespace named MyCompany.SharePoint.WebPartPages.MobileAdapters. (Replace MyCompany with your company’s name.)
5. Copy the following code into the new BusinessDataActionsWebPartMobileAdapter class.
   C#

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   using System;
   using System.Collections;
   using System.Collections.Generic;
   using System.Globalization;
   using System.Security.Permissions;
   using System.Web;
   using System.Web.Security;
   using System.Web.UI.MobileControls;
   
   using Microsoft.BusinessData.MetadataModel;
   using Microsoft.BusinessData.MetadataModel.Collections;
   using Microsoft.BusinessData.Runtime;
   
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.MobileControls;
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.MobileControls;
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
   using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls;
   using Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics;
   
   namespace Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages
   {
       public class BusinessDataActionsWebPartMobileAdapter : WebPartMobileAdapter
       {

6. Because the WebPartMobileAdapter.Control property cannot be overridden, you might have to create a custom version of it by hiding and replacing it. You can do this by declaring a new Control property in your derived class by using the new keyword, as shown in the following example.
   C#

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   protected new BusinessDataActionsWebPart Control
           {
   [Microsoft.SharePoint.Security.SharePointPermission(System.Security.Permissions.SecurityAction.Demand, 
   ObjectModel = true)]
               get { return base.Control as BusinessDataActionsWebPart; }
           }

   For more information about how to create a custom version of WebPartMobileAdapter.Control and hiding and replacing it, and why you might have to do this, see the Control property.

7. If the default implementation of the CreateControlsForSummaryView method of the WebPartMobileAdapter class is not appropriate for mobile access to the Web Part in your specific implementation, override it. An override should create any necessary child controls and add them to the Controls collection in the order in which they should appear on a mobile device. The display should contain at least a small icon and a title for the summary view on a mobile device. If those are the only display elements that that you must have, you do not have to override the CreateControlsForSummaryView method. The WebPartMobileAdapter class contains two helper methods you can use to create your display: CreateWebPartIcon() and CreateWebPartLabel().When you must display more information than what appears in the default summary view (for example, when your adapted Web Part has multiple child items that are the same type), you can add a count of the total number of children to the summary view by placing a Label control after the icon and title. The following code shows how to do this.

   Note
   This example assumes that the custom Web Part that you are adapting has a Count property of type String that returns the total number of child items.

   C#

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   protected override void CreateControlsForSummaryView()
           {
               this.CreateControlsForWebPartHeader();
               this.CreateControlsForBusinessDataActions();
           }
   
           private void CreateControlsForWebPartHeader()
           {
               Image iconImage = this.CreateWebPartIcon(WebPartIconLink.NoLink);
               iconImage.BreakAfter = false;
               this.Controls.Add(iconImage);
               this.Controls.Add(this.CreateWebPartLabel());
           }
   
           private void CreateControlsForBusinessDataActions()
           {
               try
               {
                   IList<string> result = this.Control.SelectedActions;
                   try
                   {
                       if (this.Control.BdcEntity != null)
                       {
                           IList<IAction> displayActions = GetActionsToDisplay(this.Control.BdcEntity);
                           result = new List<string>();
   
                           foreach (IAction action in displayActions)
                           {
                               Link l = new Link();
                               l.Text = action.Name;
   // This example does not create the Parameter value. 
   // Add logic to set the action of the parameter before storing this value in the Link Navigation URL.
                               l.NavigateUrl = action.Url;
                               this.Controls.Add(l);
                           }
                       }
                   }
                   catch (MetadataException)
                   {
                       // Metadata error. Just default to returning the Web Part's selected Actions.
                       result = this.Control.SelectedActions;
                   }
               }
               catch (Exception e)
               {
                   throw e;
               }
           }
   private IList<IAction> GetActionsToDisplay(IEntity entity)
           {
               IList<IAction> result = new List<IAction>();
               INamedActionDictionary namedActionDictionary = entity.GetActions();
               if (namedActionDictionary.Count != 0)
               {
                   // First add all the currently selected actions.
                   foreach (string selectedActionName in this.Control.SelectedActions)
                   {
                       if (namedActionDictionary.ContainsKey(selectedActionName))
                       {
                           result.Add(namedActionDictionary[selectedActionName]);
                       }
                       // else
   
                   }
   
                   // Action may not be in the SelectedActions list,
                   // but the Web Part is configured to display new actions and
                   // this action is not one of the explicitly de-selected ones. Add it to UI.
                   if (this.Control.DisplayNewActions)
                   {
                       foreach (IAction action in namedActionDictionary.Values)
                       {
                           if (!result.Contains(action)
                               && !this.Control.DeselectedActions.Contains(action.Name))
                           {
   
                               result.Add(action);
                           }
                       }
                   }
               }
   
               return result;
           }
   
           public void cmd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
           {
               string CommandText = ((Command)sender).Text;
   
           }

8. If the default implementation of CreateControlsForDetailView is not appropriate for mobile access to the Web Part in your specific implementation, override it. The default implementation renders an icon and title followed by a message that states that there is no detailed view for the Web Part. If you have overridden the CreateControlsForSummaryView method and do not want to provide a detailed view, override CreateControlsForDetailView and have it do nothing, as shown in the following example.
   C#

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   protected override void CreateControlsForDetailView()
           {
               // No Detail View
           }

9. To change the icon that appears next to the Web Part title, override one or more of the following properties:
   • SummaryViewTitleIconUrl  The icon that appears next to the title when the Web Part is collapsed.
   • DetailViewTitleIconUrl  The icon that appears next to the title when the Web Part is expanded.
   • TitleIconUrl  The icon that appears next to the title when the mobile device does not support expand or collapse scripting.

   The code in the following example shows how to override the TitleIconUrl property. In this override, if the Web Part displays a list and the list has an icon of its own in its ImageUrl property, that icon is displayed.

   C#

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   protected override string TitleIconUrl
   {
       get
       { 
           SPContext context = SPContext.GetContext(HttpContext.Current);
   
           if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(context.List.ImageUrl))
           {
               return base.TitleIconUrl;
           }
           return context.List.ImageUrl;
       }
   }

10. Compile the assembly, give it a strong name, and then deploy it either to the global assembly cache or to the \BIN folder of the Web application on every front-end web server in the farm. To deploy it to the global assembly cache, ensure that GlobalAssemblyCache is selected in the Assembly Deployment Target of the Properties pane of your class library project in Visual Studio 2010. This topic assumes that you are deploying to the global assembly cache.

To edit the compat.browser file

1. In a text editor, open the compat.browser file that is located at \\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\port_number\App_Browsers\compat.browser, where port_number is the port of the web application. Scroll to the <browser> element that has the refID attribute value of default. This element will have a child element named <controlAdapters> that looks much like the code in the following example.
   XML

   Copy

   <controlAdapters>
     <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.XsltListViewWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
       adapterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.XsltListViewWebPartMobileAdapter, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
     <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListViewWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
       adapterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ListViewWebPartMobileAdapter, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
     <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.Applications.GroupBoard.WebPartPages.WhereaboutsWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
       <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.Applications.GroupBoard.WebPartPages.WhereaboutsWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
                        adapterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.Applications.GroupBoard.WebPartPages.WhereaboutsWebPartMobileAdapter, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
               <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ImageWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"
                        adapterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ImageWebPartMobileAdapter, Microsoft.SharePoint, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
   </controlAdapters>

2. Add an <adapter> element as a child of the <controlAdapters> element. This child element maps your adapter class to the custom Web Part that it adapts. Notice that both the controlType attribute and adapterType attribute are required. The value for both should be the fully qualified name of the class and the four-part name of the assembly. To obtain your adapter assembly’s public key token, in Visual Studio 2010 on the Tools menu, click Get Assembly Public Key. For another way to obtain the public key token, see How to: Create a Tool to Get the Public Key of an Assembly (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539398.aspx). For more information about this XML markup, see Browser Definition File Schema (browsers Element) (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ms228122.aspx). The following code shows one example of an <adapter> element.
   XML

   Copy

   <adapter controlType="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.BusinessDataActionsWebPart, 
   Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, 
   Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" 
   adapterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.BusinessDataActionsWebPartMobileAdapter, MobileCustomization, 
   Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=<assemblyPublic Key>" />

   Note

   To deploy your adapter class to a server farm, you must change the compat.browser file as described earlier on every front-end web server. Do not overwrite the existing compat.browser file with a compat.browser file of your own because this might cancel adapter mappings that are made by other Microsoft SharePoint 2010 solution providers. Consider deploying the adapter as part of a SharePoint 2010 Feature. In the FeatureActivated event handler, create a timer job that adds the required <adapter> element to the compat.browser file on every front-end web server. For detailed information about programmatically editing the compat.browser file on all servers by using a timer job, see How to: Run Code on All Web Servers (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff464297.aspx).

To register your adapter as a safe control

1. In your Visual Studio 2010 project, add an XML file named webconfig.CompanyName.xml, where CompanyName is the name of your company or another name that is not likely to be used by any other SharePoint Foundation 2010 solution providers.

   Tip

   We recommend that you register your adapter by deploying it inside a SharePoint 2010 solution. The steps in this section are required only if your development computer is a single front-end web server. A SharePoint 2010 solution enables you to register controls as safe on all front-end web servers when your solution is deployed. For more information about using solution deployment to register controls as safe, see Solutions Overview (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543214.aspx), Manually Creating Solutions in SharePoint Foundation (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543741.aspx), and Solution Schema (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms442108.aspx).

2. Add an <action> element that follows the model in the example below to the file. The TypeName attribute of the <SafeControl> element can be the name of your adapter class, such as UserTasksWebPartMobileAdapter. If you have multiple adapter classes in the same namespace, you can use an asterisk (*) as the value of TypeName.
   XML

   Copy

   <action>
      <add path="configuration/SharePoint/SafeControls">
       <SafeControl
         Assembly=" MobileCustomization, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=<myPublicKeyToken>"
         Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages"
         TypeName="*"
         Safe="True"
         AllowRemoteDesigner="True"
       />
     </add>
   </action>

   Caution
   Using an asterisk (*) as the value of TypeName makes every class in the namespace a safe control. If you have some classes in the assembly that should not be designated as safe, move them to a different assembly or avoid using the asterisk (*) value.

   For more information about the <SafeControl> element and web.config files, see How to: Create a Supplemental .config File (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms439965.aspx) and Working with Web.config Files (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460914.aspx).

3. Save the file. You must now copy it to the %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\CONFIG folder on your development computer. The simplest way to do this on your development computer is to add the following lines to a post-build event command line or to a batch file script.
   Copy

   xcopy /y webconfig.MyCompany.xml "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\CONFIG"
   stsadm –o copyappbincontent

   Note
   This code assumes that you have followed the recommendations in How to: Add Tool Locations to the PATH Environment Variable (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee537574.aspx).

   The copyappbincontent Stsadm.exe command performs the action defined by the <action> element in your Web configuration .xml file. In this case, it inserts the new <SafeControl> element of your adapter into the web.config file at the root of the web application. It first removes any existing <SafeControl> elements for the adapter. This lets you rerun the Stsadm command with every build without creating duplicate <SafeControl> elements.) For more information about Stsadm, see Stsadm command-line tool (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288981(office.12).aspx).

 

New SharePoint 2010 Web Part Available: Querying SQL Azure Data from Web Part

This SharePoint Web Part (Can be changed easily to a SharePoint App) is able to call a SQL Azure database from code in a SharePoint Web Part.

Technologies :  SQL Azure, SharePoint Server 2010

Topics : SQL Azure, Query Execution, Sharepoint Web Parts, Sharepoint 2010, 2013

Platforms : Desktop, Cloud

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Add and use an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part in Duet Enterprise 2.0

The Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part enables you to work with multiple calendars at the same time. The Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part lets you add up to four different calendars of any of the following types: SharePoint calendar, Exchange calendar, SAP calendar, and custom calendar. For example, a site owner can add two SharePoint calendars, one Exchange calendar, and one SAP Business calendar, or four SAP Business calendars. Any combination of these calendar types is supported. To have these calendars aggregated into one place helps you avoid switching between different calendars, and you can easily compare schedules and avoid schedule conflicts.

Your SharePoint farm administer must prepare the Exchange and SAP calendar data sources before you can add Exchange and SAP Business calendars to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. Verify that the SharePoint farm administrator has prepared the required data sources. For more information, seePrepare calendar data sources for the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part in Duet Enterprise 2.0 .

 Note    This document does not describe how to add a Custom calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Activate the Aggregated Business Calendar feature

You must activate the Aggregated Business Calendar feature at the site collection-level before the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part can be used in a site.

 Note    To activate the Aggregated Business Calendar feature, you must be a site collection administrator.

To activate the Aggregated Business Calendar feature, follow these steps:

1. Go to the site on which you want to use the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. Click the Settings icon, and then click Site Settings.
3. On the Site Settings page, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Site collection features. Note    Ensure that you are on the top level Site Settings page when you perform this step. Otherwise, you must click Go to top level site settings.
4. On the Features page, in the Aggregated Business Calendar row, clickActivate.

Add the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part to a site

This procedure describes how to add an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part to a page on a web site in the site collection on which you activated the Aggregated Business Calendar feature. You can reuse this list.

 Note    You can add only one Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part per page on a SharePoint site.

Before you perform this procedure, ensure that you have activated the Aggregated Business Calendar feature.

 Note    To add an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part to a page on a SharePoint site, you must have the Contribute or Design permission level on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have these permission levels.

To add an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part to a page on a SharePoint site, follow these steps:

1. Go to a page on a SharePoint site on which you want to add the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. Click PAGE tab and then click Edit.
3. Position the cursor in the area of the page where you want to add the Web Part.
4. On the on the Insert tab, in the Parts group on the ribbon, click Web Part.
5. In the Categories pane, click Duet Enterprise.
6. In the Parts pane, click Aggregated Business Calendar, and then click Add.
   You can now see the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part on the site.
7. Click the Edit tab in the ribbon and then click Save.

 Note    An Invalid configuration message appears in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part because you have not yet configured a calendar for this Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. So before you can use the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must add a calendar to it.

Add calendars to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part

To start using the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must first add at least one calendar—a SharePoint calendar, an Exchange calendar, or an SAP Business calendar—to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    The Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part loads calendars synchronously. This means that the Web Part loads all items from all calendars (data sources) that you add before the Web Part displays any calendar items. In addition, other Web Parts that you may have added to the same page will not load until all calendars are loaded. This means that users might experience a delay before the page is rendered.

In this section:

Add a SharePoint calendar

Before you add a SharePoint calendar to an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, the SharePoint calendar that you want to add must exist in the same site as the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. If it does not, the SharePoint calendar will not be available to add to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. If you already have a SharePoint calendar, skip to the Add a SharePoint calendar procedure. Otherwise, go to the Create a SharePoint calendar procedure.

Create a SharePoint calendar

Follow this procedure to create a SharePoint calendar. Ensure that you create the SharePoint calendar in the same site as the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    To create a SharePoint calendar, you must have the Contribute or Design permission level on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have these permission levels.

To create a SharePoint calendar, follow these steps:

1. Click the Settings icon and then click Add an app.
2. In the Apps you can add section, click Calendar.
3. In the Adding Calendar dialog box, click Advanced Options.
4. In the Name box, type a name for the SharePoint calendar. The calendar name is required.
   The name appears at the top of the calendar page, becomes part of the web address for the calendar page, and appears in navigational elements that help users find and open the calendar.
5. In the Description box, optionally type a description of the purpose of the calendar.
6. To share the calendar with other users, click Yes in the Group Calendar Options section.
7. Click Create.
   The calendar appears.

Add a SharePoint calendar

After you verify that the SharePoint calendar that you want to add exists in the same site in which the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, you can add the SharePoint calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    Because you can add one or more SharePoint calendars to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, ensure that you add properties, such as color, to the SharePoint calendar that you select to differentiate it from the other calendars that you might have.

 Note    To add a SharePoint calendar to an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must have the “Edit Items” list permission on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have this permission.

 Note    All Users who open an aggregated business calendar can view all calendar entries for a SharePoint group calendar if they have permissions to view the source calendar. The user does not need to be the owner of the calendar entry or listed as attendee of the entry.

To add a SharePoint calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, follow these steps:

1. On the page of a SharePoint site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the PAGE tab in the ribbon, and then click Edit.
2. Select the check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. On the ribbon, click the WEB PART tab, and then click Web Part Properties.
4. In the Add Business Calendars for overlay section, click the drop-down arrow, select SharePoint calendar, and then click Add.
5. In the Calendar Type section, do the following:

1. In the Title box, type the title of the calendar as you want it to appear on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. In the Description box, optionally type a description of the calendar.
3. In the Color drop-down list, select the color that you want the SharePoint calendar entries to have on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
4. In the Available SharePoint Calendars drop-down list, select the calendar that you want to add.
   NOTE Only calendars that are in the same site appear in this drop-down list.
5. In the Available Views drop-down list, select the view that you want to use for the calendar.
   NOTE Only public views can be selected.

1. Click Save to add the SharePoint calendar and then click OK.
   You can now see the SharePoint calendar in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. You can add, view, edit, and delete SharePoint calendar entries on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Add an Exchange calendar

Before you can add an Exchange calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, a member of the Farm Administrators group must establish a trust relationship between the SharePoint Server farm and the server running Microsoft Exchange Server. For more information, see Prepare calendar data sources for the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part in Duet Enterprise 2.0 .

Also, an owner of the Exchange calendar must configure the relevant permissions on the Exchange calendar. The following procedures describe how to configure permissions on an Exchange calendar, and then how to add an Exchange calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Configure permissions on an Exchange calendar

By default, an Exchange calendar displays only free and busy information to users other than the owner of the calendar. The Exchange calendar owner can configure permissions on the Exchange calendar to allow the calendar to display other details, such as the subject line and location information.

 Note    To configure the permissions on the Exchange calendar, you must be an owner of the Exchange calendar.

To configure the permissions on the Exchange calendar, follow these steps:

1. Log on to a computer on which Microsoft Outlook 2013 has been installed, and then connect to the calendar on which you want to configure permissions.
2. Start Outlook 2013.
3. Click Calendar.
4. In the left-hand navigation pane, expand My Calendars, and select the check box for the calendar on which you want to set permissions.
5. Right-click the calendar, and then click Properties.
6. In the Calendar Properties dialog box, click the Permissions tab.
7. In the Permission Level box, click the default user type in the list, and then select the permissions that you want.
   NOTE You can add other permissions, but some permission levels are public and can be seen by other users.
8. Click OK.

Add an Exchange calendar

After you configure permissions on the Exchange calendar, you can add the Exchange calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    Because you can add one or more calendars to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, ensure that you add properties, such as color, to the Exchange calendar that you select to differentiate it from the other calendars that you might have.

 Note    To add an Exchange calendar to an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must have the “Edit Items” list permission on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have this permission.

To add an Exchange calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, follow these steps:

1. On the page of a SharePoint site where your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the PAGE tab in the ribbon, and then click Edit.
2. Select the check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. On the ribbon, click the WEB PART tab, and then click Web Part Properties.
4. In the Add Business Calendars for overlay section, click the drop-down arrow, select the Exchange calendar, and then click Add.
5. In the Calendar Type section, do the following:

1. In the Title box, type the title of the calendar as you want it to appear on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. In the Description box, type a description of the calendar.
3. In the Color list, select the color that you want the Exchange calendar entries to have.
4. In the Exchange Web Service URL box, type the URL of the Exchange Web service.
   This is the location of your Exchange server and from where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web part gets the Exchange calendar items.
5. Click Test link to confirm that the link works.
6. If want to access your Exchange calendar by adding a link to it in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, type the Outlook Web Access (OWA) URL in the Outlook Web Access URL box.

1. Click Save, and then click OK.
   You can now see the Exchange calendar in your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. You can only view—not add, edit, or delete—Exchange calendar entries in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Add an SAP Business calendar

Before you can add an SAP Business calendar to your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, a member of the Farm Administrators group must import and grant permissions to the TimeEntry BDC model. For more information, seePrepare calendar data sources for the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part in Duet Enterprise 2.0 .

Because SharePoint Server cannot access data directly from an SAP Business calendar, you must create an external list in SharePoint Server. The data from the SAP Business calendar can then be imported to this external list. When you add the SAP Business calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, the external list becomes associated with the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    The TimeEntry BDC model is included with Duet Enterprise 2.0 and is designed to be used with SAP time data. In addition, the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part can be used with data sources such as leave requests and so on. To use the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part with other data sources, the farm administrator must import and grant permissions to the BDC model that is designed to be used with SAP time management data and tell you the name of the external content type that is used in the BDC model. Then, you can create an external list just as you would with the TimeEntry BDC model.

Create an external list

To add an SAP Business calendar, you must first create an external list in SharePoint Server. Ensure that you create the external list in the same site in which the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located.

 Note    To create an external list, you must be a member of the site Owners group, a site collection administrator, or a member of the Farm Administrator group. You must also have the “Selectable in clients” permission on the external content type.

To create an external list, follow these steps:

1. Go to the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located.
2. Click the Settings icon and then click Add an app.
3. On the Your apps page, in the Apps you can add section, click External List.
4. On the Adding External List dialog box, in the Name text box, type a name for the external list as you want it to appear throughout the site.
5. In the Data source configuration section, click the Select External Content Type icon.
6. In the External Content Type Picker dialog box, in the External Data Source column, click Time and then click OK.
   NOTE Time is the external data source, and TimeEntry is the external content type that is included in the Time BDC model. Note that the display name for this BDC model is TimeEntry, by default.
7. Click Create.

Add an SAP Business calendar

After you create the external list, you can add the SAP Business calendar to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    Because you can add one or more SAP Business calendars to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, ensure that you add properties, such as color, to the SAP Business calendar that you select to differentiate it from the other calendars that you might have.

 Note    To add an SAP Business calendar to an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must have the “Edit Items” list permission on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have this permission.

To add an SAP Business calendar, follow these steps:

1. On the page of a SharePoint site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the PAGE tab in the ribbon, and then click Edit.
2. Select the check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. On the ribbon, click the WEB PART tab, and then click Web Part Properties.
4. In the Add Business Calendars for overlay section, click the drop-down arrow, click Business calendar, and then click Add.
5. In the Calendar Type section, do the following:

1. In the Title box, type the title of the calendar as you want it to appear on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part site.
2. In the Description box, optionally type a description of the calendar.
3. In the Color drop-down list, select the color that you want the SAP Business calendar entries to have.
4. In the Available Business Calendars drop-down list, select the external list that you created in the Create an external list procedure for this calendar.Note that only external lists that can be used with the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part are displayed.
5. In the Available Views drop-down list, select the view that you want to use for this calendar.
   NOTE Only public calendar views are available. Other types of views such as standard view and Gantt View are not available.

1. Click Save, and then click OK.
   You can now see the SAP Business calendar in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. You can add, view, edit, and delete SAP Business calendar entries on the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Delete a calendar from the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part

You might want to delete a calendar from the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, for example, if you do not need it anymore, or if you already have four calendars and want to replace one with another calendar.

 Note    To delete a calendar from the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you must have the “Edit Items” list permission on the site. By default, members of the site Owners group have this permission.

To delete a calendar from the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, follow these steps:

1. On the site where your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the PAGE tab in the ribbon, and then click Edit.
2. Select the check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. On the ribbon, click the WEB PART tab, and then click Web Part Properties.
4. In the Business Calendars section, in the Title column, click the calendar that you want to delete.
5. Click Delete to delete the calendar and then click OK.

Edit a calendar in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part

You might want to edit a calendar that has been added to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

To edit a calendar that has been added to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, follow these steps.

 Note    You cannot change the calendar type after it has been added to the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. For example, you cannot change an Exchange calendar to an SAP Business calendar. If you no longer need a particular calendar in the Web Part, remove it from the Web Part and add the calendar that you want.

1. On the site where your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the PAGE tab in the ribbon, and then click Edit.
2. Select the check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. On the ribbon, click the WEB PART tab, and then click Web Part Properties.
4. In the Business Calendars section, in the Title column, click the calendar that you want to edit.
5. In the Calendar Type section, do any of the following:

• In the Title box, type a new title for the calendar.

• In the Description box, add or edit the existing description for the calendar.
• Select a different color for this calendar from the Color drop-down list.
• Select a different calendar from the list of available calendars.
• Select a different view from the Available Views list.

1. Click Save, and then click OK.

Add and manage calendar entries

These sections describe how to add and manage calendar entries in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. Users can use this Web Part to manage calendar entries in the calendars that have been added to the Web Part, if they satisfy one or more of the following conditions:

• Have permissions to access the site that contains the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
• Have permissions to add and manage calendar entries on the calendars that have been added to the Web Part.

The color that administrators gave a calendar when they first added it identifies the different calendars in an Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. Also, the name that administrators gave each calendar appears next to a check box in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. These check boxes are selected by default. You can access each separate calendar by clicking it.

The Day, Week (default), and Month commands enable you to choose the number of days that are displayed in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. The Day view shows one day at a time, the Week view displays the complete seven day week, and the Month view displays the current calendar month. To move to the next or previous day, week, or month, you can use the Back and Forward navigation buttons.

If you have multiple entries on the same day in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you can use the Expand All and Collapse All commands to view or hide these entries.

By clicking the small arrow in the top-right corner of the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part, you can minimize, close, edit, or export the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

 Note    You cannot add, edit, or delete an Exchange calendar entry in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

The procedures in this section describe how to add, view, edit, delete, and save/refresh calendar entries in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Before you perform these procedures, you must have added at least one calendar to your Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

In this section:

Add a SharePoint calendar entry

To add a SharePoint calendar entry, follow these steps:

1. On the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. On the ribbon, on the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab, click New Event, and then click <calendar> Event where <calendar> is the title of the calendar as it appears in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. Enter the following information in the New Item dialog box:

1. In the Title box, type the name of the event.
2. In the Location box, type where the event takes place.
3. In the Start Time box, type the date when the event starts.
4. In the End Time box, type the date when the event ends.
5. In the Description box, type a description of the event.
6. In the Category section, select the default value, or specify your own value.
7. If you want to make this event an all-day activity, select the check box in theAll Day Event section.
8. If you want to make this event a recurring event, select the check box in theRecurrence section.

1. Click Save.

You might need to click Save/Refresh on the ribbon to see the entry in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Add an SAP Business calendar entry

To add an SAP Business calendar entry, follow these steps:

 Note    When you create a calendar entry, some fields might be automatically populated from the context of the selected calendar. For example, Start time, End time, Subject line, or location.

1. On the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
2. On the ribbon, on the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab, click New Event, and then click <calendar> Event where <calendar> is the title of the calendar as it appears in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.
3. Type information in the relevant boxes.
4. Click Save.

You might need to click Save/Refresh on the ribbon to see the entry in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

View a calendar entry

To view a calendar entry, on the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, do one of the following:

• Click the calendar entry that you want to view and in the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab group of the ribbon, click View Event.
• Click the link in the calendar entry.

 Note    Different options are available in the Aggregated Business Calendar depending on which calendar entry that you are viewing. For example, for a SharePoint calendar entry, you can edit, view, and delete an entry, view version history, manage permissions, and create an alert. For an SAP Business calendar entry, you can delete and edit an entry. However, entries from an Exchange calendar can only be viewed.

 Tip    When you view an entry from an Exchange calendar that has been configured by using an Outlook Web Access connection, the following error might be displayed: “Page context missing. Please open the page from the correct Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part context.” This can occur if the Subject field or Location field of the calendar entry contains the text string “OBA::”. For example, the subject line “SHOBA::shareholders meeting” can cause this error. To resolve the error, use an email application, such as Microsoft Outlook, or use a browser to access the Outlook Web Access URL and remove the text string “OBA::” from the Subject field or Location field of the calendar entry.

Edit a calendar entry

To edit a calendar entry, follow these steps:

1. On the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the calendar entry that you want to edit.
2. In the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab of the ribbon, click Edit Event.
3. In your entry, make changes, and then click Save.
   The changes are updated in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. Notes 

   The Title, Start Time, and End Time are required fields.
   You cannot edit an Exchange calendar entry in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part.

Delete a calendar entry

To delete a calendar entry, follow these steps:

1. On the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, click the calendar entry that you want to delete.
2. In the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab of the ribbon, click Delete Event.
3. In the dialog box that appears, click OK.

Save/Refresh a calendar

You primarily use the Save/Refresh option to select and deselect the calendars that you want to view in the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part. Note that this option works in public view only.

To save or refresh a calendar entry, follow these steps:

1. On the site where the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part is located, select the calendars that you want to view or deselect the calendars that you do not want to view.
2. On the ribbon, click the AGGREGATED BUSINESS CALENDAR tab, and then click Save/Refresh.
   This saves your preferences and also refreshes the Aggregated Business Calendar Web Part to reflect your changes.

Debugging SharePoint 2013 workflows using Visual Studio 2013

   Learn about the new tools for remotely debugging workflows in Visual Studio 2012

 

In Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012, we enabled remote event debugging using Windows Azure Service Bus.

Now, in Visual Studio 2013, we have implemented a similar approach for remotely debugging workflows in apps for SharePoint.

The new and re-worded debugging options are available on the SharePoint tab under the Properties page of your app for SharePoint project, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Configure remote event and workflow debugging

To debug workflows on Office 365, select the “Enable Workflow debugging” and “Enable debugging via Windows Azure Service Bus” check boxes and enter the Service Bus endpoint connection string. If you try to debug without providing a connection string, you will be prompted to supply one.

Figure 2. Prompt for a connection string

As mentioned in the previous blog post, you’ll need to follow these steps to use the Windows Azure Service Bus for debugging remote events:

1. Register for a Windows Azure account and then create a Service Bus namespace.
2. See Managing Service Bus Service Namespaces for more information about managing namespaces.
3. To get the Service Bus connection string, select your service namespace, choose Access Key, and then copy the Connection String.

After you have enabled remote event debugging and configured the Service Bus connection string, you can debug remote events.

FAQ

1. How can I turn on/off the notification from Visual Studio that tells me to provide a Service Bus connection string?      If you are debugging an Office 365 workflow in your project and have not configured Service Bus debugging, Visual Studio will prompt you to configure it (see Figure 2). You can change this behavior by clearing the Notify me if Windows Azure Service Bus debugging is not configured check box on the SharePoint project property page.
2. When do I need to enable the Service Bus debugging for workflows?      You must enable Service Bus debugging if you want to debug workflows on Office 365. If your project targets SharePoint installed on your local network, you do not need to enable Service Bus debugging. Instead, you need to open incoming connections to TCP port 12292. If you use Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, you can simply enable the rule “Workflow Manager Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio 2012 – Test Service Host”. If you try to debug against a SharePoint host on the local network without opening the port, Visual Studio will prompt you to enable the rule.
3. Do I have to enable Service Bus debugging for every project?      Even though you configure the settings in project properties, Service Bus debugging settings are saved for the current user of the workstation so that you can reuse the settings across different projects. However, this setting is not saved into source control (TFS), so if they are needed by a different user or on a different machine, they need to be entered again.
4. Will I be charged for Service Bus usage?      Yes. Remote event debugging uses the Relay Service component of the Service Bus. Refer to the Service Bus Pricing FAQ for more information.       If you are currently a Visual Studio Professional, Premium, or Ultimate with MSDN subscriber, you can check out the special offer on Windows Azure, which provides Service Bus Relay Hours of up to 1,500, 3,000, and 3,000 respectively.
5. Do I have to change debugging settings before I publish my app to the marketplace or to the Corporate Gallery?      No. The package created by the Publish command in Visual Studio has the .app extension and does not contain any debugging information. A separate package, having the .debugapp extension is the only one used during debugging.
6. Can I use Service Bus to debug workflows in SharePoint sandbox or farm solutions?      No. SharePoint solutions can only be debugged against SharePoint installed on the developer’s workstation.
7. Can I use Service Bus to debug SharePoint 2010 workflows?      No. You can only use it for debugging apps for SharePoint, and apps cannot contain SharePoint 2010 workflows.