Sanjay Sansanwal

XSLT Rendering–SharePoint 2010 Web Parts

2011-10-17T17:02:00.000+11:00

One of the main areas of investment when developing Web Parts is the user interface and the output of (X)HTML code. A Web Part needs to merge transparently into an existing page (Web Part Page or Wiki Page), adhering to the rich and user-friendly layout of the hosting site, which can be a public CMS solution. Nevertheless, the output of the Web Parts can be defined in its CreateChildControls method or, for Visual Web Parts, in the ASCX code of the corresponding visual control. However, you cannot always predict where the Web Part will be hosted; thus, you cannot provide a layout that will be appropriate for
every kind of output.

Of course, you can try to satisfy different layout requirements by just working with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but in general, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. This is an issue that Microsoft had to face when developing SharePoint itself.

Consider how Web Parts such as the SearchCoreResults or the XsltListViewWebPart render their output, to name but a couple of
examples. These native Web Parts accept an XSLT transformation as one of their main parameters and apply that transformation to an XML document that represents the real content of their output.

Often, in real SharePoint solutions that target not only intranet/extranet sites but also public Internet scenarios, you will need to develop custom Web Parts that follow these same basic principles.

This technique is truly powerful because it lets you define a completely custom layout for Web Parts while still sharing common business logic and behavior, but it doesn’t impose any specific constraints about the (X)HTML code to output, so it’s often your best choice in realworld SharePoint Internet solutions.

Passed Exam 70-667: TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

2011-10-16T17:07:00.000+11:00

Last week, I finally gave the 70-667 exam and passed with 750 marks. The exam was not as easy one would expect. The toughest part were multiple questions where you need to arrange the steps of configuration. I was knowing what all involve in configuration but arranging them in proper steps were bit hard.

So, here is my 1 cent advise on anyone who wants to sit this exam-

Go through Wiley Publishing - MCTS Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Configuration Study Guide. Follow each step on a test SharePoint Virtual machine
Use MeasureUp or other exams and make sure to go through the explanation

If you follow these thoroughly, I am pretty confident that you will be able to pass this exam..ALL the best.

Explanation - Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The security validation for this page is invalid.

2011-09-30T16:07:00.000+10:00

SharePoint applies a security check whenever you change data through the Server Object Model during HTTP requests. In fact, by default, SharePoint web forms use a form digest control to enforce security. The form digest is a hidden field POSTed by SharePoint webforms and checked by the security infrastructure on the server. When you make changes to objects by using the Server Object Model during an HTTP GET request, this input field will be missing, so by default SharePoint will throw an exception that looks like this excerpt:

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The security validation for this page is invalid.

Similarly, if you send an HTTP POST request with a missing or invalid form digest value, you will receive the same error. This behavior applies only during HTTP requests. Therefore, when you reference the Server Object Model in a class library or a batch tool that runs outside of the ASP.NET pipeline, the security check will not occur. In fact, the check process looks for the
HttpContext.Current variable; if it is null the digest validation will not occur.

With that in mind, if you are developing a webpage that will respond to HTTP GET requests, or a custom web form page that doesn’t inherit from the WebPartPage type and doesn’t use the Form Digest control, you will need to instruct SharePoint to skip the digest validation;otherwise, your code will not work.

To instruct SharePoint to skip the validation, set the Boolean AllowUnsafeUpdates property of the current SPSite or SPWeb to true.

Conversely, when you develop a custom ASPX page, and you want to exploit the security environment provided by SharePoint, you have a couple of choices: you can inherit from WebPartPage, or manually include a FormDigest control in your page.

In the first case you simply need to inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPartPage base class, which internally renders a FormDigest control. Then, in your code, you call the utility method SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest() to check the digest when you POST the page back to the server.

In the latter case you need to include the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.FormDigest control in your page(s), and you still need to invoke the SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest() method to check the digest.

Handling exception in SharePoint Client Object Model

2011-08-06T16:09:00.000+10:00

If you use normal try … catch … finally blocks to handle exceptions in Client Object model, you will need to invoke the server via ExecuteQuery three times(one for each situation). This could lead to performance degradation as well as to a huge stress on the server side. Luckily the Client Object Model provides a class named ExceptionHandlingScope that is specifically defined to support such situations and avoid executing multiple queries against the server.

Refer sample from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee534976.aspx

ClientContext clientContext = new ClientContext("http://MyServer/sites/MySiteCollection");            

            ExceptionHandlingScope scope = new ExceptionHandlingScope(clientContext);            

            using (scope.StartScope())
            {
                using (scope.StartTry())
                {
                    List oList = clientContext.Web.Lists.GetByTitle("My List");
                    oList.Description = "In Try Block";
                    oList.Update();
                }

                using (scope.StartCatch())
                {                    
                    // Assume that if there's an exception, it can only be 
                    // because there is no list with the specified title, so
                    // create the list.
                    ListCreationInformation listCreateInfo = new ListCreationInformation();
                    listCreateInfo.Title = "My List";
                    listCreateInfo.Description = "In Catch Block";
                    listCreateInfo.TemplateType = (int)ListTemplateType.Announcements;
                    List oList = clientContext.Web.Lists.Add(listCreateInfo);                    
                }

                using (scope.StartFinally())
                {                    
                    List oList = clientContext.Web.Lists.GetByTitle("My List");
                    oList.EnableFolderCreation = true;
                    oList.Update();                     
                }
            }

            clientContext.ExecuteQuery();

Explanation:

Under the cover, the ExceptionHandlingScope instance collects activities (internally called ClientAction) to execute on the server side for all the three situations (try, catch, finally). The server will begin executing the code inside the StartTry block, and then in case of failure, it will execute the code in the StartCatch. Whether or not exceptions occurred in the StartTry

block, it will finally execute the code in the StartFinally block. However, the request sent to the server is just one, as well as the response.

Read SharePoint 2010 List item using Web Service

2011-06-29T16:08:00.000+10:00

This sample uses the GetList operation of the Lists.asmx service to retrieve the configuration of the target list to query. It then loads the items of the list by using the GetListItems operation,providing a default query over the default view of the list.

String targetListName = "News";
String baseUrl = "http://local/_vti_bin/";
Lists wsLists = new Lists();
wsLists.Url = baseUrl + "Lists.asmx";
wsLists.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
XElement listMetadata = XElement.Load(new XmlNodeReader(wsLists.GetList(targetListName)));
Guid targetListId = new Guid(listMetadata.Attribute("ID").Value);
XmlNode listItemsXmlNode = wsLists.GetListItems( targetListId.ToString(), // ID of the target list
String.Empty, // ID of the view or String.Empty for default view
null, // CAML query or null
null, // ViewFields or null
"200", // RowLimit as a string
null, // Query options
null // ID of the web site or null for root website
);

XElement listItemsXml = XElement.Load(new XmlNodeReader(listItemsXmlNode));
var xmlItems = from x in listItemsXml.Descendants("{#RowsetSchema}row")
select x;
foreach (XElement xmlItem in xmlItems) {
Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1}",
xmlItem.Attribute("ows_ID").Value,
xmlItem.Attribute("ows_Title").Value);
}

Both of the operations we invoked (Lists.GetList and SiteData.GetListItems) return a result in the form of XML; in fact, we use classes of LINQ to XML to read and parse them. While working with SharePoint SOAP services, you will need to be accustomed to managing different kinds of results, because it is common for XML results to be presented in various ways (XmlNode, String, arrays of custom types, and so on).

Main OOTB Services Published by SharePoint 2010

2011-06-21T16:08:00.000+10:00

Alerts.asmx

Allows listing and deleting alerts subscriptions for users.

Authentication.asmx

Provides an operation for logging on to a SharePoint site that uses FBA. The Login operation returns a cookie that should be used in all subsequent calls to other services.

Lists.asmx

Provides operations to work with lists, content-types, list items, and files. For example, this service offers operations to check-in and check-out a file in a document library, or to query list data using CAML queries.

SiteData.asmx

Allows reading sites, webs, lists, and items. SiteData.asmx targets external search engines willing to crawl contents of a SharePoint site.

Sites.asmx

Allows creating, deleting, reading, exporting, and importing of SharePoint websites.

Webs.asmx

Provides operations to manage content-types, site columns, and features of a SharePoint website

Search.asmx

A service that allows querying the search engine of SharePoint Server.

Sample–Using ECMAScript Client Object Model

2011-05-31T16:09:00.000+10:00

Below is a sample application page which uses ECMAScript client object model to retrieve a List instance and show its Title property.

<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls"
Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="Utilities" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Register Tagprefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" %>

<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %>
<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Web.CommandUI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ECMAScriptDemoPage.aspx.cs" Inherits="ECMAScriptDemo.Layouts.ECMAScriptDemoPage" DynamicMasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" %>

<asp:Content ID="PageHead" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead" runat="server">
<SharePoint:ScriptLink ID="SPScriptLink" runat="server" LoadAfterUI="true" Localizable="false" Name="SP.js" />

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
var clientContext;
var web;
var oContactsList;
function onQuerySucceeded(sender, args) {
alert('Title of the List: ' + this.oContactsList.get_title());
}

function onQueryFailed(sender, args) {
alert('Request failed ' + args.get_message() + '\n' + args.get_stackTrace());
}

function retrieveContacts() {

this.clientContext = new SP.ClientContext.get_current();
this.web = this.clientContext.get_web();
this.oContactsList = this.web.get_lists().getByTitle("News");
this.clientContext.load(this.oContactsList);
this.clientContext.executeQueryAsync(
Function.createDelegate(this, this.onQuerySucceeded),
Function.createDelegate(this, this.onQueryFailed));

}

</script>
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Main" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderMain" runat="server">
<input type="button" onclick="retrieveContacts()"
value="Click me to get the list!" />
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="PageTitle" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderPageTitle" runat="server">
ECMAScript Object Model Demo Page
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="PageTitleInTitleArea" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea" runat="server" >
ECMAScript Object Model Demo Page
</asp:Content>

Retrieving SharePoint List data in blocks

2011-05-07T16:10:00.000+10:00

To reduce the impact on the sever, you could use SPQuery object’s RowLimit property to get data from SharePoint list in blocks.

The below code shows how one could get data in block of 10s-

SPList list = web.Lists["News"];
SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
// Define the query
query.Query = "<Where><Contains><FieldRef Name=\"Title\" />
<Value Type=\"Text\">San</Value></Contains></Where>";

// Define the maximum number of results for each page (like a SELECT TOP)
query.RowLimit = 5;

do {
SPListItemCollection items = list.GetItems(query);
foreach (SPListItem item in items) {
}
// Set current position to make SPQuery able to set the start item of the next page
query.ListItemCollectionPosition = items.ListItemCollectionPosition;
} while (query.ListItemCollectionPosition != null);

The ListItemCollectionPosition property is of type SPListItemCollectionPosition. It offers a PagingInfo property of type String, which contains the following data:
Paged=TRUE&p_ID=10

The _ID is the unique identifier of the last item retrieved so that SharePoint can know the starting position of the next page.

Unexpected Behavior of LINQ to SharePoint

2011-04-29T16:01:00.001+10:00

When using LINQ to SharePoint to query items in list folder and the folder path is invalid, the query seems to return item from all the folders recursively

When using LINQ to SharePoint inside PageMethods, the code need to be run under elevated permissions

LINQ to SharePoint code under elevated permission

2011-03-24T13:53:00.001+11:00

Use the following code to run your code under elevated permission…

string url = SPContext.Current.Site.Url;
HttpContext backupCtxt = HttpContext.Current;
try
{
    if (SPContext.Current != null) HttpContext.Current = null;
    SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
    {
        using (SPSite sc = new SPSite(url))
        {
            using (SPWeb web = sc.OpenWeb())
            {
                HttpRequest httpRequest = new HttpRequest("", web.Url, "");
                HttpContext.Current = new HttpContext(httpRequest, new HttpResponse(new System.IO.StringWriter()));
                using (MyDataContext dc = new MyDataContext(web.Url))
                {

                          // YOUR CODE

                }
            }
        }
    });
}
catch
{
    throw;
}
finally
{
    if (SPContext.Current == null)
        HttpContext.Current = backupCtxt;
}

The one thing to note is that as SPContext is recreated, you will not be able to refer this in YOUR CODE. Also, any function which is called from YOUR CODE should also not use SPContext object.

7 free .net books for Programmers and Architects.

2010-10-12T20:36:00.001+11:00

Foundations Of Programming

The Foundation Of Programming Series Free e-book By Karl Seguin is one of my favorites. It is simple, short and sweet. Especially for ‘casual’ programmers, this will give a better thought process – that’ll definitely enable them to code better and think better. This book covers the ALT.NET Philosophy, Domain Driven Development concepts, DI, TDD etc in a nice way. This book is close to my heart.

Download From Here

Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition

Published by Microsoft, this is an essential read for any Microsoft.NET developer or Architect to understand the underlying architecture and design principles and patterns for developing successful solutions on the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework. This guide neatly covers popular architecture patterns, best practices and common challenges you need to understand for developing .NET applications. Get a good grip on developing enterprise applications in .NET.

Download From Here

Rob Miles C# Yellow Book 2010

A nice action packed book that takes you through C# and .NET concepts. This book explains C# language and .NET library in general – with a clear focus on implementation thought process and best practices.

Download From Here

Threading in C#

A short, neatly written book from Joe Albahari about Threading in C#. This is a must read for any .NET programmer to understand more about threading in general, thread pooling, synchronization, Non blocking synchronization, etc. In this book, Joe even covers the Parallel Framework Extensions and Parallel programming in .NET

Download From Here

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

This guide is again from Microsoft, and focuses on designing your applications with Performance and scalability in mind. It has sections relevant to architects, developers, testers, and administrators. Following the checklists and guidance in this book will ensure that there won’t be any unpleasant surprises in the end. Read this guide if you develop Enterprise applications in .NET

Download From Here

Applying Design Patterns

This is a quick introduction towards the thought process of applying design patterns. The objective of the book is to introduce design patterns in a simple way, so that developers can understand some common patterns and how to apply them. I wrote that some time back ;)

Download From Here

RefCardz from DZone

DZone has a number of awesome Ref Cardz (Quick reference sheets) on multiple technologies. You can go to DZone –> RefCardz to browse and download them (after getting a free DZone Id). Here are some of my recent favorites

Happy learning

Understanding and Positioning of SharePoint Server 2010 for Technical Pre-Sales Professionals Course Completed

2010-07-15T10:38:00.001+10:00

Finally managed to complete this pre-sales course and got certificate of completion from Microsoft Partner Academy…

Fix for error Sql server 2005 reporting service add-in setup interrupted

2010-04-18T18:33:00.001+10:00

To use Report Viewer web part in SharePoint 2007 64-bit environment, you need to install SQL Server 2005 Add-in. I downloaded the setup from Microsoft site and ran the MSI - “SharePointRSx64”.msi. The setup failed with the error as “sql server 2005 reporting service add-in setup interrupted”. If you are having this issue, follow these steps:

Open the command window (Start>Run type cmd and press enter)
Navigate to the path where the installer (SharePointRSx64.msi) is stored
Execute SharePointRSx64.msi SKIPCA=1
CD to %temp%. Look for rsCustomAction.exe. If not found, browse to the parent directory
Execute rsCustomAction.exe /i to auto-configure the installed files.

Once the installation will finish, you will be able to see the Reporting Integration section in Central Administration.

Presentation on Service Applications in SharePoint 2010

2010-04-07T10:38:00.001+10:00

Check the slide show presented by me to Melbourne SharePoint user group on Service applications in SharePoint 2010

Presentation Link

Running Hyper-V Disk Images on Windows 7

2010-03-11T15:57:00.001+11:00

On Windows 7 you could install Virtual PC 64 bit but unable to run a 64 Bit guest operating systems. This is quite frustrating as you could not use Hyper-V VHD provided by Microsoft on Windows 7. The lack of Microsoft virtualization application lead us to use Sun VirtualBox.

VirtualBox includes support for 64-bit guest operating systems and applications. VirtualBox supports Windows 7 as a host OS. It also has no licensing costs as it is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Another important feature is that VirtualBox natively supports Microsoft Hyper-V virtual disk image files (.VHD). This feature allows us to take a virtual machine built with Hyper-V and use it on a portable machine such as a laptop or desktop computer.

Download VirtualBox Binaries

Sun VirtualBox is available via download from the site http://www.virtualbox.org

Create a VirtualBox Virtual Machine

Creating a new virtual machine (VM) is performed by launching the New Virtual Machine Wizard.

Name the VM and select the OS Type as appropriate. The OS Version selected must indicate (64 bit). If you are unable to select a version with (64 bit), this likely means the CPU in your host is not 64 bit. You will not be able to run a 64 bit guest if the host CPU is not 64 bit. If you are running Windows 2008 R2 guest, select Windows 2008 (64 bit).
Select an appropriate memory allocation. The recommendation for a SharePoint 2010 server is 4096. Be sure to leave adequate memory for the host OS.
When configuring the disk, you need to specify the existing .VHD file. Click the icon to launch the Virtual Media Manager and add the existing .VHD.
After completing the wizard, click Settings to make a few adjustments:

Select the appropriate Network setting – see the VM Guest Network Configuration section below for guidance
It is suggested to disable Audio

Start the VM and Install the Guest Additions

After first starting the VM guest, it is strongly recommended to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions to improve performance and enable mouse/keyboard transitions between host and guest.

Click Start to launch the VM guest
Login to the VM (the CTRL + ALT + DELETE key sequence is RIGHT CTRL + DELETE)
If you need to release the mouse, press RIGHT + CTRL
At this time, ignore error messages indicating failure to load device drivers (installing the Guest Additions will take resolve these failures)
When prompted to restart the computer to apply changes, click Restart Now
Login again
Install the Guest Additions by clicking Devices, Install Guest Additions… (or pressing RIGHT + CTRL + D). When prompted, select Run VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe. Accept all defaults and accept prompts to install Sun Microsystems device drivers.
Restart when prompted
Login again
If desired, adjust the display resolution
If you have Internet connectivity, run Windows Update and install the latest security updates
Adjust the time zone as appropriate

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 planned for launched on 12th May

2010-03-10T21:42:00.002+11:00

Watch Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 11 a.m. EST. The live keynote focuses on the next wave of productivity that delivers:

End user productivity across the PC, phone and browser
IT choice and flexibility
A platform for developers to build innovative solutions
Join the virtual launch event with Microsoft executives, product developers, partners and customers to:

Find out how peers and partners are already seeing benefits to their business by leveraging the next wave of productivity.
Submit your questions through live Q&A.
Participate via blogs, tweets, social media networks, commenting, and more.
View on-demand breakout sessions showing how Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 meet the unique challenges people and businesses are faced with today, and provide the solutions they need for tomorrow.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx#fbid=DI4gkPybuyL

Application variables empty in classic ASP when deployed on IIS 7.0

2010-02-26T14:48:00.001+11:00

Last week, I went back in time when one of my friend asked me to help on his site developed in classic ASP. He wanted to deploy this on IIS 7.0 and was getting all his Application variables empty. First, I thought there will be one more global.asa in one of parent directory. But there was no other global.asa file and the worst part was all session variables were working. Finally, I was able to fix this by converting the site from Virtual directory to an Application in IIS 7.0.

So, to make your classic ASP site which is using Application variables work with IIS 7.0, deploy it as an application and not virtual directory. Glad ASP.NET came :-)

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Preparation Tool

2010-02-05T17:04:00.001+11:00

This tool assist you in the installation of the software prerequisites for SharePoint Server 2010. Ensure that you have an Internet connection, because some of these prerequisites are installed from the Internet.

To Run this tool:

Download SharePoint Server 2010 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=168780) from the product installation location, and then double-click the OfficeServer.exe file.
Accept the license and check the prerequisites

This tool checks if following prerequisites exists:

Web Server (IIS) role
Application Server role
Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1
Microsoft "Geneva" Framework
Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
Microsoft Chart Controls for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP3
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET
ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2

Feature Activation Error : Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

2010-02-02T10:50:00.001+11:00

If you get error denied while activating this feature, you have not activated the dependent feature called “PublishingResources”.

Fix:

Activate the “PublishingResources” feature using stsadm command

stsadm -o activatefeature -name PublishingResources -url http://YOUR_WEBSITE
(change the URL)

Now, Activate the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature.

Error: “The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress”

2010-01-29T09:24:00.001+11:00

Check you don’t have duplicate XML tag in the machine.config file on the server reporting error. It was Index server for me.

Free Microsoft Office 2010 Book

2009-12-23T09:11:00.001+11:00

Download the free e-book “First Look: Microsoft Office 2010” from here

http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_press/archive/2009/12/09/free-e-book-first-look-microsoft-office-2010.aspx

The current farm uses database from the following SQL server(s) whose versions are not supported.

2009-12-02T11:47:00.002+11:00

While upgrading from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010, you might get the following error-

The current farm uses database from the follwoing SQL server(s) whose versions are not supported.

SharePoint requires these SQL server(s) to be upgraded to minimum supported version before you can continue. Refer to the log file of this configuration wizard for more information about the minimum supported SQL versions and download instructions.

To fix this you need to install cumulative updates for SQL Server 2008 SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970315

Steps to change Virtual Directory Local Path for a MOSS WebAppications and Central Admin site

2009-12-02T10:17:00.001+11:00

One of easiest way to move Web Application virtual path is to delete the Web application(only IIS site) from Central Administration and recreate them again using new path. But you cannot move Central Admin site using this approach.

After goggling for sometime, I found this nice article which describes the steps to move SharePoint sites including Central Admin

The link is http://www.mattjimison.com/blog/2009/02/26/how-to-change-the-iis-path-for-a-sharepoint-web-application/\

Install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7(64-bit):

2009-11-30T12:08:00.001+11:00

SharePoint 2010 provide functionality to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows7. Follow these steps to install on Windows7(64-bit):

1. Install SQL Express 2008 from "http://www.microsoft.com/express/sql/download/”

2. Download SharePoint 2010 Beta from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee388573.aspx. Copy the exe to the folder C:\SharePointFiles

3. Open Command prompt and run

c:\SharePointFiles\ en_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe /extract:c:\SharePointFiles

4. Open the file using notepad “c:\SharePointFiles\files\Setup\config.xml”

5. Add <Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/> to the Configuration section

6. Install the Filter Pack from C:\SharePointFiles\PrerequisiteInstallerFiles\FilterPack\ FilterPack.msi

7. Install the following softwares:

Sync Framework (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=141237)
Microsoft Geneva Framework Beta 1 Runtime for x64(http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/D/F3D66A7E-C974-4A60-B7A5-382A61EB7BC6/MicrosoftGenevaFramework.amd64.msi)
SQL Native Client(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123718)
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970315)
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ded875c8-fe5e-4cc9-b973-2171b61fe982&displaylang=en)

8. Run following command to Install Windows Features(IIS and other related)

start /w pkgmgr /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;

IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;

IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;

IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;

IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;

IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;

IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;

IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;

IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;

WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI;WCF-HTTP-Activation;

WCF-NonHTTP-Activation

9. Run “c:\SharePointFiles\Setup.exe” to install SharePoint

10. On “Choose the installation you want page”, click Standalone

11. Choose default settings and complete the installation

12. Now, run RegEdit and browse to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS”

13. Change “ServerRole” value from SINGLESERVER to WFE

14. Start the “the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard” and follow the steps to install SharePoint 2010

Sandboxed Solution in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-26T15:43:00.001+11:00

SharePoint 2010 comes with a great feature – Sandboxed Solution. This is type of solution which could be deployed to a site by a site administrator. A site administrator don’t need to be a farm administrator to deploy the solution. The solution have full access to the site where it is deployed but limited to other sites and resources for security reason.

This would be ideal for SharePoint Online services where you could create multiple sites and give user permission to manage and upload custom code to their site without needing assistance from farm administrator

To create a sandboxed solutions:

Create a new SharePoint project in VS 2010
On SharePoint Customisation Wizard, enter your Site URL. Select “Deploy as a sandboxed solution” as trust level
Click Finish and start adding your artifacts to the project
Build the solution and create WSP package
Browse to your site
Open Site Actions – Site Settings
Under the Galleries section, select solutions
On the Solution page, upload the solution

Now, you could add your artifacts(web parts, activate features) specific to your site

Safe List object from SPWeb in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-26T13:23:00.001+11:00

If MOSS 2007, the code to read the list object use to be

SPWeb web;
SPList list = null;
try
{
list = web.Lists[“Pages”] }
catch(Exception ex)
{
// List not found
}

The reason to have a try-catch was because SharePoint would throw an exception if the list does not exist

Glad to see that in SharePoint 2010, this issue is fixed. The code in SharePoint 2010, would be

SPWeb web;
SPList list = web.Lists.TryGetList(“Pages”)

TryGetList returns the list with the specified title from the list collection, but returns null if its not found. No more more error handling is required

Using Linq To SharePoint in 2010

2009-11-23T12:16:00.001+11:00

SharePoint 2010 comes with SpMetal tool that auto-generate entity types based on a list definition. It uses the SharePoint Lists web service to get the schema of a list.

This tool is located at c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin

The syntax is

spmetal.exe /web:SITE-URL /namespace:YOUR_NAMESPACE /code:CLassName.cs

Microsoft.Sharepoint.Linq Assembly

2009-11-23T12:11:00.001+11:00

This is not installed in GAC and hence would not be visible in .NET assembly tab when adding a new reference to project. This is located under at “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI”

Data View Web Part in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-23T12:00:00.001+11:00

This web part have been replaced by XSLT List View Web part in SharePoint 2010. The old Data View Web part is still supported in SharePoint 2010 but not recommended to use.

Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-23T11:51:00.001+11:00

SharePoint 2010 comes up with great tool to check the performance and process steps(same like ASP.NET trace). This would enable the following information to be displayed:

· The SQL queries they have and their timings.
· Web Part Events Offsets for testing performance against custom web parts.
· Trace information, usually only found in the ULS logs, now available on the page.
· A tree view of all controls on the page.
· Session and Cookie information

To enable it, follow these steps:

Enable Developer Dashboard- Run this command “stsadm.exe" -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv OnDemand”
Do IISReset
Activate Developer dashboard by clicking on the icon in the top right corner of the browser window of your site
This will refresh the browser and display the tool bar at the bottom of the page. Click on the Show or hide additional tracing information link at the bottom for detail trace information

Update Parent Content Type

2009-11-20T16:59:00.001+11:00

When you update a parent content type, the following consideration need to be taken account:

Settings of child content type column would be overridden by setting of parent content type column
If you make some changes in parent content type and don’t push them down to child content type, these changes would not be pushed to child content type on later stage.
If you delete any column in child content type, they are not created again when you push changes from Parent content type
Read-only and Sealed child content type will not be updated and an error would raise

Error “Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this CPU is not compatible with 64-bit mode"

2009-11-20T16:38:00.001+11:00

This error occurs when you are trying to create a 64 Bit operating system VMware.

To fix this, restart your machine and enter your system BIOS. Look for Virtualization property and enable it. This is disabled by default.

Installing SharePoint 2010 on Microsoft Virtual PC

2009-11-20T16:29:00.001+11:00

You can't install SharePoint 2010 on Microsoft Virtual PC as it needs 64 bit Platform. As of now, Microsoft Virtual PC don’t support 64 bit operating system guest.

To overcome, you need to use VMWARE as Windows 2008 64 Bit could be installed on VMware Client.

Upgrade Vista 32 Bit to 64 Bit Windows 7

2009-11-20T16:13:00.001+11:00

If you try to install Windows 7 64-bit on 32-bit Vista, the following error would occur:

The Version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running.

The issue is you can’t do a direct in-pace upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows 7. The only way to do a clean install. Follow the below steps:

Backup manual data from your machine
Backup the application settings and user documents\pictures etc using Windows Easy Transfer(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/easy-transfer.aspx)
Create a bootable DVD or USB using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool(http://download.cnet.com/Windows-7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool/3000-18513_4-10972600.html)
Restart the machine and access BIOS(using F12 or other key as per your machine). Change the Boot sequence to use DVD\USB as the first option
Restart the machine, Windows7 setup should start now
Select “Custom” installation option and follow the instructions
Install and activate Windows 7

Enjoy the wonderful experience of Windows 7

Update SharePoint List LookUp field

2009-11-17T11:38:00.001+11:00

To update a lookup field in SharePoint, you need to use SPFieldLookupValue constructor

The format is

Item[“LookupField”] = new SPFieldLookupValue(ITEM_ID, ITEM_TITLE);

Create a blank page in Pages Library

2009-11-17T11:35:00.001+11:00

You need to perform these steps:

Get a blank page from file system or using the below function

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("<%@ Page Inherits=\"Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.TemplateRedirectionPage,Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing,");
sb.Append("Version=12.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c\" %> <%@ Reference VirtualPath=\"~TemplatePageUrl\" ");
sb.Append("%> <%@ Reference VirtualPath=\"~masterurl/custom.master\" %><html xmlns:mso=\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" ");
sb.Append("xmlns:msdt=\"uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882\"><head> <title></title></head>");
Byte[] blankPage = ASCIIEncoding().GetBytes(sb.ToString());

Now, add this blank page to the Pages Library

SPList list = web.Lists["Pages"];

SPFile file= list.RootFolder.Files.Add(“blankpage.aspx”, blankPage);

SharePoint Online

2009-11-16T15:53:00.001+11:00

This comes in two offerings:

Standard Offering	Dedicated Offering
Multiple customers share a common infrastructure	Each customer has its own infrastructure
Customer priority: rapid deployment	Customer priority: heavy customization
No lower seat limit	For customers with more than 5000 seats
Cost efficiency optimized for customers with up to 20,000 users	Optimized for customers with 20,000+ users

The dedicated offering support custom code including SharePoint Packages

For developing on SharePoint Online Services, check this white paper which describes the customization (or extensibility) capabilities that are supported with the Standard offering of SharePoint Online-

Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard Developer Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d007f35e-375c-4b11-bc40-bc9082bb224a&displaylang=en&tm)

Microsoft Online Services

2009-11-16T15:41:00.001+11:00

Seeing the prospect and future in cloud computing, Microsoft have moved rapidly in BPOS(Business Productivity Online Suite). This Suite contains of:

SharePoint Online
Exchange Online
Office Communicator Online
Office Live meeting

The next product to add to this suite would be Dynamics CRM. Having SharePoint online using Microsoft Live services is a great initiate as this would help to target small to medium customer. These customer who wants to have a presence on web would vastly benefit from this cost effective, secure and reliable server.

For more details check http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx and try 30 days trial

Follow the Microsoft Online Service team on their blog at http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/default.aspx

Get WorkFlow Task Item from List Item Id

2009-08-28T10:38:00.001+10:00

        public static SPListItem WorkflowTaskItemBasedOnListItem(SPWeb web, string listName, string workflowTaskListName, int itemId)
        {
            SPListItem workflowItem = null;
            SPList workflowTasks = web.Lists[workflowTaskListName];
            SPList mainList = web.Lists[listName];
            SPListItem listItem = mainList.GetItemById(Convert.ToInt32(itemId));
            SPWorkflowFilter filter = new SPWorkflowFilter();
            filter.InclusiveFilterStates = SPWorkflowState.Running;
            // Get a list of workflow tasks associated with current Item
            SPWorkflowTaskCollection workTaskColl = web.Site.WorkflowManager.GetItemTasks(listItem, filter);
            foreach (SPWorkflowTask task in workTaskColl)
            {
                if (task != null)
                {
                    workflowItem = workflowTasks.GetItemById(task.ID);
                    break;
                }
            }

return workflowItem;
}

This function returns a workflow item based on Parent List item Id. It reads the List Item and finds the associated workflow which are still running against this list item.

Type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUser' in Assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c' is not marked as serializable. Type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUser' in Assembly

2009-08-28T10:35:00.001+10:00

Make sure you are not storing any object of SPUser type in Session on ViewState. I was getting this error SPUser was persist in ViewState. We changed the logic to store LoginName and everything worked fine

The security validation for this page is invalid. Click Back in your Web browser, refresh the page, and try your operation again

2009-08-28T10:29:00.001+10:00

Recently, I was getting this error when non-admin were trying to alter a workflow task. My code was running under elevated permission using the option first as described in my last post(using SharePoint\System) user

To fix, I need to run the code under elevated permission using second option as described in my last post(RunWithElevatedPrivileges)

    string siteURL = SPContext.Current.Site.Url;
    SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
    {
        SPSite objSite = new SPSite(siteURL);
        SPWeb web= objSite.OpenWeb();

web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

        Hashtable taskHash = new Hashtable();
        SPListItem item = null;
        item["Status"] = "Completed";
        SPWorkflowTask.AlterTask(item, taskHash, false);
        web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
    });

Running Code with Elevated Permissions

2009-08-28T10:23:00.001+10:00

There are 2 ways to run code under elevated permissions. The first one is using the token created from SharePoint\System(internal user) user

public static SPWeb GetElevatedWeb
        {
            get
            {
                var superUser = SPContext.Current.Web.AllUsers[@"SHAREPOINT\SYSTEM"];
                var superToken = superUser.UserToken;
                using (var site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Web.Url, superToken))
                {
                    return site.RootWeb;
                }
            }
        }

This function returns a SPWeb object which is created using elevated permissions

The second method is using SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges

public static SPWeb GetSPElevatedWeb
        {
            get
            {
                SPWeb web = null;
                string siteURL = SPContext.Current.Site.Url;
                SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
                {
                    SPSite objSite = new SPSite(siteURL);
                    web = objSite.OpenWeb();
                });
                return web;
            }
        }

The SPSite object is created by reading the SPContext object before calling RunWithElevatedPrivileges as the context will change in the code block

Create custom groups in SharePoint

2009-08-03T16:39:00.001+10:00

To create custom groups in SharePoint, use the SPWeb SiteGroups collection.

web.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, owner, member, description)

Groups created using code will not automatically appear in left navigation. For them to appear there, the groups need to be associated with web. The code to this is

web.Properties["vti_associategroups"] = web.Properties["vti_associategroups"] + “;” + web.SiteGroups[groupName].ID.ToString();

web.Properties.Update();

Function to read List Item Id based on task

2009-08-03T16:31:00.001+10:00

taskListItemId = id of task item

web = Web object

SPListItem taskItem = taskList.GetItemById(taskListItemId);
Guid workflowInstanceId = new Guid((string)taskItem["WorkflowInstanceID"]);
SPWorkflow workflowInstance = new SPWorkflow(web, workflowInstanceId);
SPList itemList = workflowInstance.ParentList;
SPListItem parentListItemId = itemList.GetItemById(workflowInstance.ItemId);

Other way of getting Elevated Web

2009-08-03T16:22:00.001+10:00

SPUser superUser = SPContext.Current.Web.AllUsers[@"SHAREPOINT\SYSTEM"];
string superToken = superUser.UserToken;
using (var site = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Web.Url, superToken))
{
return site.RootWeb;
}

This function would return a web object running under the super user “SharePoint\System” (inbuilt) account

Retrieve the attachments of List Item

2009-08-03T16:19:00.001+10:00

To retrieve the attachment, access the folder object of the item and then read the files

SPFolder folder = Web.Folders["Lists"].SubFolders[listName];

folder = folder.SubFolders["Attachments"].SubFolders[itemNo];
foreach (SPFile file in folder.Files)
{
}

Read AD SPUser in SharePoint

2009-08-03T16:16:00.001+10:00

Web object’s AllUsers property returns user which have accessed the site. To validate a user which has never existed on the site use

Web.EnsureUser(strUserLogin);

Add\remove Quick launch link

2009-08-03T16:14:00.001+10:00

Add a quick launch link group

     public static void AddQuickLaunchGroup(SPWeb web, string groupName)
        {
            SPNavigationNodeCollection quickLaunchNodes = web.Navigation.QuickLaunch;
            SPNavigationNode groupMenu = new SPNavigationNode(groupName, "", false);
            quickLaunchNodes.AddAsFirst(groupMenu);
            web.Update();
        }

Remove quick link group-

        public static void RemoveQuickLaunchGroup(SPWeb web, string groupName)
        {
            SPNavigationNodeCollection quickLaunchNodes = web.Navigation.QuickLaunch;
            foreach (SPNavigationNode node in quickLaunchNodes)
            {
                if (string.Compare(node.Title, groupName) == 0)
                {
                    quickLaunchNodes.Delete(node);
                    web.Update();
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

Add Quick launch link to a group-

        public static void AddQuickLaunchLink(SPWeb web, string groupName, string linkName, string linkUrl)
        {
            SPNavigationNodeCollection quickLaunchNodes = web.Navigation.QuickLaunch;
            foreach (SPNavigationNode node in quickLaunchNodes)
            {
                if (string.Compare(node.Title, groupName) == 0)
                {
                    SPNavigationNode linkNode = new SPNavigationNode(linkName, linkUrl, true);
                    node.Children.AddAsFirst(linkNode);
                    web.Update();
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

Remove quick launch link from a group-

        public static void RemoveQuickLaunchLink(SPWeb web, string groupName, string linkName)
        {
            SPNavigationNodeCollection quickLaunchNodes = web.Navigation.QuickLaunch;
            foreach (SPNavigationNode node in quickLaunchNodes)
            {
                if (string.Compare(node.Title, groupName) == 0)
                {
                    foreach (SPNavigationNode nodeChild in quickLaunchNodes)
                    {
                        if (string.Compare(nodeChild.Title, linkName) == 0)
                        {
                            node.Children.Delete(nodeChild);
                            web.Update();
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Add field to default view in SharePoint List

2009-08-03T14:01:00.001+10:00

SPView view = list.DefaultView;
view.ViewFields.Add(fieldName);
view.Update();

Create a Lookup field in SharePoint list

2009-08-03T13:57:00.001+10:00

/// <summary>
/// Adds the lookup field to list.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="web">The web.</param>
/// <param name="list">The list.</param>
/// <param name="fieldName">Name of the field.</param>
/// <param name="lookupListName">Name of the lookup list.</param>
/// <param name="lookupFieldName">Name of the lookup field.</param>

SPField AddLookupFieldToList(SPWeb web, SPList list, string fieldName, string lookupListName, string lookupFieldName)
        {
            SPList destList = web.Lists[lookupListName];
            list.Fields.AddLookup(fieldName, destList.ID, required);
            SPFieldLookup field = list.Fields[fieldName] as SPFieldLookup;
            field.LookupField = destList.Fields[lookupFieldName].InternalName;
            field.Update(true);
            return field;
        }

Create a User field in SharePoint List

2009-08-03T13:55:00.001+10:00

SPList list;

list.Fields.Add(fieldName, SPFieldType.User, required);
SPFieldUser field = list.Fields[fieldName] as SPFieldUser;
field.SelectionMode = SPFieldUserSelectionMode.PeopleOnly;
field.AllowMultipleValues = false;
field.Presence = true;
field.Update(true);

The selection of directory service properties is disabled because the portal is in an untrusted domain

2009-06-23T14:58:00.001+10:00

In User Profile, I was unable to modify any user property mapping due to missing Data Source field dropdown. There was no question of untrusted domain as I am using only one active directory and SharePoint was able to import from that. I finally managed to fix these by following these steps:

Goto to Profile and Import Settings
Click View Import Connections
Click on Existing Import Connection and select edit
In Authentication Information section, make sure the account is SharePoint Admin Domain account and not the default account
Click Ok and you should now able to see mapping data source drop down

Delete a Web Part in SharePoint

2009-04-07T15:55:00.001+10:00

If you are planning to remove a web part from a page, ALWAYS click on Delete menu rather than pressing the X button. Clicking on X button would close the web part and you will receive a warning in your servers event log. The web part is not actually deleted from the page, it is removed from the Visible area of the page and placed in the Web Part Page Gallery.

You can delete a CLOSED web part by using the Web Part Maintenance page. Browse to http://www.yourserver.com/yoursite/yourpage.aspx?contents=1

You could see the web part that has been closed. Now, delete it by selecting the checkbox and pressing Delete

Accessing Current User in MOSS

2009-04-07T15:06:00.001+10:00

You could get the current user in SharePoint by calling the following code:

SPUser user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser;

But to access the current user inside the code running under Elevated Privileges, open new reference to SPSite.

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()

{
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(“http:\\MOSS_SITE”))

{
      using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())

          SPUser user =SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser;

    }

}
);

The above code will switch the user context and now, you would get the user under which application pool is running

Mystery of SharePoint\System Account

2009-04-07T14:58:00.001+10:00

When you run your code with Elevated Privileges, the code runs under the identity of the hosting application pool. SharePoint\System account exists ONLY within content of SharePoint runtime(not recognised by Windows Security subsystem) and map internally to the account under which application pool is running.

If you are running application pool under DOMAIN\SSUSER account, the code is still audited as running under SharePoint\System account. So, if you get access error on SharePoint site stating that SharePoint\System account don’t have access to the resource, this is because the application pool identity account don’t have access to the resource. Don’t spend time looking for SharePoint\System account :-)

Set Manager Profile property value

2009-04-03T10:44:00.001+11:00

To assign manager from one profile to another, you could not set it directly. You need to convert the Source Manager profile to a UserProfile object and then assign the account name to the destination profile manager’s property.

UserProfileManager upManager;
UserProfile sourceProfile, destProfile;

string managerId = sourceProfile["manager"].Value.ToString();

if (upManager.UserExists(managerId))

{

UserProfile managerProfile = upManager.GetUserProfile(managerId);

destProfile["manager"].Value = managerProfile["Accountname"].Value;

}

Change the Regional Setting of Site

2009-03-31T13:27:00.001+11:00

You could change the regional setting of the site by browsing to Site Actions > Site Settings > Regional Settings

You could also change the Locale using the following code:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://SITE"))
{
    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
    {
        SPRegionalSettings newRegionalSettings = new SPRegionalSettings(web);

        // Change to Australia
        newRegionalSettings.LocaleId = 3081;
        web.RegionalSettings = newRegionalSettings;
        web.Update();
    }
}

In-Line Script in SharePoint Page

2009-03-27T15:55:00.002+11:00

You could add in-line script to a SharePoint page or Page template.

<asp:Content ID="main" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="PlaceHolderMain">
<% Response.Write("Hello Sanjay Sansanwal"); %>
</asp:Content>

You would able to access this page without error provided this page is ghosted(uncustomised) as WSS complies a ghosted page into an assembly DLL for processing.

But if you customise this page or open in SharePoint, SharePoint safe mode don’t allow this and you would get error “Code blocks are not allowed in this file”.

You could force SharePoint to allow in-line scripts in customised pages by adding following to the web.config

Note: You should avoid doing this as it compromise SharePoint security. In-Line scripts are not allowed in customised pages so that unwanted user could not write malicious code to hack the system.

Add a custom menu to the list

2009-03-27T15:08:00.001+11:00

Change the elements.xml described in last blog posting to add a menu item to the menu which appears when you edit a document item

This CustomAction element is different than what you have seen before because it has a RegistrationType attribute that is assigned a value of List. It also is configured with a RegstrationID attribute that is assigned a value of 101. Note that 101 is a list type identifier that applies to all document libraries. You should also notice that the Location attribute has a value of EditControlBlock, which creates the effect of adding the menu item to the ECB menu of documents within a document library.

Note the {ListId} token and the {ItemId} token within the UrlAction Url’s QueryString. MOSS dynamically replaces them with list GUID and itemId

Add Custom Action to SharePoint Site

2009-03-27T15:00:00.002+11:00

Create a new feature which copy custom page(My Page) to the layout\CustomPages folder. Add the following in the elements.xml to create a custom action item.

<CustomAction Id="SiteActionsToolbar"
GroupId="SiteActions"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
Sequence="2001"
Title="My Page"
Description="Browse to my custom page"
ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/DECISION.GIF">
<UrlAction Url="~site/_layouts/CustomPages/MyPage.aspx"/>
</CustomAction>

This would add a new menu called “My Page” to the Site Actions menu.

When creating a CustomAction element, you can configure the URL attribute of the inner UrlAction element by using the ~site token, as you have just seen. You could also use ~sitecollection token in cases in which custom page should always be executed within a URL associated with the current site collection and its top-level site.

To restrict this page to only viewable to administrator, add RequireSiteAdministrator attribute to CustomAction and set it to “True”. For more security, add the following code in the “My page” custom page -

protected override bool RequireSiteAdministrator {
get { return true; }
}

Find PublicKeyToken of signed assembly

2009-03-27T14:12:00.001+11:00

To find the publickeytoken of an assembly, I use to drag and drop the assembly to C:\Windows\Assembly folder and then view the properties.

The better way is to use SN.EXE located under “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin” folder.

You could integrate this tool into VS IDE using external tool features.

In Visual Studio 2005, click Tools -> External Tools...
Click Add and enter the following into the different fields as displayed in the following screenshot:
- Title: Get Public Key
- Command: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\sn.exe
- Arguments: -Tp "$(TargetPath)"
- Uncheck all options, except Use Output window\

Now, you have a new entry listed in the Tools menu titled Get Public Key as shown in the following screenshot:

Assuming you have a project open that has been configured to be signed when built, and you've built it at least one time, selecting the new Get Public Key menu item from the Tools window to get the public key token and blob in the Output window.

Here you have assembly publictokenkey in second entry

Missing Create GUID Tool from Visual Studio 2005

2009-03-27T14:03:00.001+11:00

I created a new VM and installed Visual studio 2005. To my horror, I could not found the Create GUID tool in Visual Studio.The Create GUID tool is often found under the Tools menu.

To fix this, I performed the following steps:

Reset my IDE settings.
Select "Tools --> Import and Export Settings --> Reset All Settings" to restore the defaults. Woh, I could see the Create Guid in tool. But, it was disabled :-(

The actual file for generating GUID is guidgen.exe which would be located at “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools”.

I realised that this file is missing as I didn’t installed Visual C++. I was trying to be smart :-)

Downloaded the Guid generator setup from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=94551f58-484f-4a8c-bb39-adb270833afc&displaylang=en
Extracted the contents and placed them into “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools”.
Hurray, I could see the Create GUID now in my tools

MOSS Filter web parts Not found

2009-03-25T15:15:00.001+11:00

To add filter web part to your web part list:

1. Click on the new button in the web-part gallery and select the correct classes from web part gallery

2. If you can’t find them in web part gallery, upload the Web Part definition files from %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\BizAppsSiteTemplates\dwp.

For more information about Filter web part Click here

Filter MOSS custom list view based on User Profile properties

2009-03-25T15:07:00.001+11:00

MOSS 2007 comes with a number of filter web parts that makes it really easy to filter your SharePoint lists by connecting filter web parts with list view web parts.

Note: These are only available in MOSS enterprise edition and could only be applied to “All Items” view or to view configured as “Standard View” type

I would walkthrough in this tutorial to filter a list items based on User Location (mapped to Office profile property in the User Profile repository).

Background

There are list of courses stored in a custom list called “Courses”. The requirement is to display courses only available in current logged user’s location. The easiest way would be to create a view on the list and set the filters. Ironically, there is not inbuilt [Location] attribute like [Me] or [Today]. You could filter the view on [Me.Office] as shown below

The other way is to use the Current User Filter. With the Current User Filter you can filter the contents of web parts by using any property of the current user.

Steps

1. Create a List called Courses

Column	Description
Type	Name of Course
Description	Detail about the course
Instructor	Name of instructor
Location	City where course would be held

2. Add couple of items to this list with different location. Make sure one record have location same as your location. In this example, current user’s Office profile property has value as “Melbourne”.

3. As the list page is a web part page, you could easily add web parts to this using User Interface.

4. Click Site Actions -> Edit Page

5. On the top of the list, click “Add a new Web part” and select web part “Current User Filter”

6. Edit the newly added web part “Current User Filter” by clicking Edit -> Modify Shared Web part

7. Click “SharePoint profile value for current user” and select “Office” from dropdown

8. Press OK.

9. Now, we need to make a connection between this web part and courses list. On “Current User Filter” web part, click Edit -> Connections and Select Courses

10. You would be prompt with a dialog box, select the List field which need to be mapped to the User’s Office attribute.

11. Click Finish and Exit the edit mode. You would now only see the items in list which have location same as your Office.

MOSS Ghosted and Unghosted Experience

2009-03-17T14:10:00.002+11:00

In last project, I managed a large MOSS project consisting of around 30 developers span across two countries. On first deployment to SIT, we found that UI changes have not gone to SIT environment. We could see the changes in the Source control and on the actual files in the file system of deployment server.

To verify, I added “Hello World” text to the physical file located under our site definition. The changes were not reflected on the application home page. This testing proved that the our custom site definition pages have been unghosted(customised) and have current instance in the database.

We found that developer have used SharePoint Designer to customise these pages and hence they been unghosted. We ghosted(un-customised) them by going to Site Actions –> Reset to Site Definition. Once done, we were able to see the changes on our application. This process is called Reghosting == Changing from Customized to Un-Customized

To stop this to happen again, we restricted SharePoint Designer access to ONLY development environment. All the customize changes went through to other environment using SharePoint Package as described in my previous blog entry “Customise SharePoint List forms – Part 2 “

Note: Reverting pages to their original ghosted state will destroy existing page content and meta info. It is highly recommended that you make a backup copy of a page before resetting the page.

Customise SharePoint List forms – Part 2

2009-03-17T13:50:00.002+11:00

In Part 1, I walkthrough modifying the display form of the list by adding headers. This was achieved using SharePoint Designer. This is easy to do on development machine but how would you do this on Test or Production environment. You would not be able to connect to this environment using a developer tool. If you are in your organization, please avoid as this is not good practice. Opening pages using SharePoint designer would un-ghost your custom pages (add to database). If you install the changed pages using SharePoint solution, your application would read from database and not from file system.

To deploy a custom dispform to the production environment, you need to create a WSP package.

Steps:

1. Create List Instance Schema:

The best tool which REALLY does a job is Imtech StsAdm Commands. Download it from http://www.codeplex.com/imtech/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=10875

2. Install Imtech STSAdm package to your development server

3. The command sytax is

stsadm.exe -o ocdexportlist

-url <url of the site containing the list>

-name <list name>

-dir <export location>

This action exports the definition of a list with the given Name

Example:

stsadm.exe -o ocdexportlist -url http://sharepoint –name Employee -dir C:\EmployeeList\

4. Run the command changing the text in red according to your environment

5. This would generate following files –

Schema.xml

The XML which describes the list instance

DispForm.aspx

Display form based on the List

NewForm.aspx

New form based on the List

EditForm.aspx

Edit form based on the List

AllItems.aspx

Form which displays the default view(All Items)

6. Create Elements.xml and Feature.xml files(Check Microsoft site for creating them).They are simple XML file which contains the feature information

7. Create a SharePoint Package and add the files to the project

8. Build the solution and deploy on production site. You should now have a list called Employee and having headers in Display form for the item.

Customise SharePoint List forms – Part 1

2009-03-17T13:20:00.003+11:00

I have been asked several times to modify the list forms- DispForm.aspx, NewForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx. As these forms are associated with list and stored in database, you can’t edit these phase from UI.

The best way is to create the list in development environment and open the web pages using SharePoint Designer.

In this tutorial, I would walkthrough to add Headers to the sections. We are having an employee list whose fields need to be group under Personal and Company Headers

Walkthrough:

1. Create a custom list called Employee

2. Add Text Fields for Personal Details – Employee Name, Address, City, Country

3. Add Text Fields for Company Details – Company Name, Company Country

4. The list should show like the below figure

5. Click on New button on the Employee list to create new record

6. Enter details and press OK

7. Click on Employee Name to view the details. You would see that there is no grouping and no option to Edit the page

8. Open SharePoint designer and browse to the list

9. Click on “DispForm.aspx” to view it in the designer

10. Select the Main Content holder and press delete. This will remove the existing ListFormWebpart

11. Now, insert a custom list form from menu. Go to Insert -> Sharepoint Controls -> Custom List Form

12. In popup, select Display form and press OK. You should have the page changed to something like below

13. As Custom List form displays the field in a HTML table, you are free to modify the HTML. You could insert your custom or OOB web parts now to the page.

14. Make appropriate change and save the form. This would save the form into the database and the changes would be reflected in the UI

You now have a custom list form with headers :-)

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Login Button Missing

2009-03-17T11:05:00.004+11:00

Last week, I was informed by Commonwealth Bank of Australia that they would be changing the look and feel for their Net banking screen. I thought that great as they should be making it more users friendly. On weekend, I went to check the page and login to the site. Unfortunately, I was unable to login into site as they forgot to put the Logon button. Yes, there was no logon button. I called help desk and was told yes some of browser have this issues. You can't use enter button as its trapped using JavaScript and you are prompt for that. Finally, I tried using it was Firefox and there you go. It worked....
So, someone forgot to test the site on Internet Explorer as if that not the most common used browser 
I dig more and found that there was in fact a logon button which was not visible on IE. You could go to this using tab and will find a hidden box selected. Clicking on that took me inside the net banking.
A nice workaround :-). I think CBA would focus more on user ability testing from next time

The Study Guide for Technical Specialist: MOSS 2007 – Application Development Exam (70-542)

2009-01-28T11:00:00.000+11:00

Passing this exam would earn you MCTS: SharePoint Server 2007 ― Application Development certification. If you are a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), you not only thrive on the continuing challenges of the information technology (IT) field, but you also take the initiative to develop and hone your skills so that you stay a step ahead. When you become Microsoft certified, you will:

• Stand out. Prove your specific, real-world technology skills.

• Be productive. Help increase customer satisfaction, reduce network downtime, and push service to a higher level.

• Achieve success. Each Microsoft certification takes you further along the path to professional recognition.

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 – Application Development certification highlights your area of expertise and validates the knowledge and skills required to build Web portals and integrate business applications by using Office SharePoint Server 2007. A successful candidate will have prior experience working with XML, the Microsoft .NET Framework, and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services development

The process to become is very simple. Once you have done all the preparation and confident to pass this exam, you need to enrol for the exam at Prometric

Who should apply?
Candidates for this exam are consultants who provide consulting services for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and corporate developers who use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Candidates have the following experience or knowledge:

· Six months to one year of experience developing applications by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

· Experience using the following related technologies:

1. The Microsoft .NET Framework at least six months with ASP.NET 2.0)

2. Windows SharePoint Services development (six months to one year)

· Experience working with XML documents

· Experience with XML Web services development and consumption

· Working knowledge of Windows Workflow Foundation

· Working knowledge of IIS 6

Log into Promteric site and browse to Microsoft -> 70-542. Now, select the testing centre close to your location and book a suitable time. Do the payment. It is pretty much the same thing afterwards about rescheduling etc. Rescheduling notice time is one business day.

Once you book a spot with Prometric, you will receive an email from Prometric about the confirmation of the exam spot on a given date and time. Prepare your best for the exam and go to the examination centre on a scheduled date and time. They do pretty much the standard identification check (one with your photo and other with your signature) and allow you to sit an exam. The exam itself consists, almost entirely, of multiple choice questions. You will usually be required to select one answer from a possible four (using radio buttons), in some instances you may be asked to select two answers (using a selection items/tick boxes), and in at least one case you will have to drag and drop possible answers from the left side of the screen to the right in the correct order. The exam currently consists of about 32 questions, and you need to get about 70% correct to pass.

At the end of the exam, you will get the final result – % Scored. If you pass (and I am sure you will) then relax for few moments as you have achieved a very demanding certification. Then celebrate as it’s time to party after such hard-work.

There are different approaches being taken by different people doing the same task. I completely understand that you may follow different approach to get your certification. Regardless of your expertise with SharePoint, allocate yourself a good amount of time to study. This exam covers most of MOSS functionality and as such you’ll need to brush up on allot of skills, so make sure you have the hours free!

This section mainly shows the study path that as per me should get you pass this exam.

Topic

Description

Resource

Document Policies

Study up on custom document policies, what they are, when you need them, and how to create them e.g.:

Public class DocPolicy : IPolicyFeature

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tonstegeman/archive/2007/02/01/moss-custom-policies-part-1-creating-a-custom-information-management-policy.aspx

Content Deployment

If you have done this before or used STSADM, you should be fine

http://blogs.msdn.com/jackiebo/archive/2007/02/26/content-deployment-step-by-step-tutorial.aspx

Custom Field Controls

Learn what you can inherit a custom field control from and why

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa981226.aspx

Excel Services

Learn about this new technology that enables you to load, calculate, and display Excel workbooks on Office SharePoint Server 2007

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms519581.aspx

Variations Feature

http://aspnetcoe.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/customize-variation-root-landing-logic/

Business Data Catalogues

Yes, they come up extensively. Pay particular attention to the XML and know how to define entity vs methods. Make sure you know the difference between a Finder and Specific Finder method.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms563661.aspx

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-4-SharePoint_2007__BDC_-_The_Business_Data_Catalog.aspx

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Should be part of BDC

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/michael/archive/2007/07/30/using-the-business-data-catalog-with-single-sign-on.aspx

InfoPath forms

Pay special attention to what you need to do to get the form to display on an ASP page. Where does the XSN/XML file get added and so on?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/magazine/cc163562.aspx

User Profiles

Read up on the API ensure you know what the code looks like, because you will be looking at code snippits in this exam

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms574336.aspx

Search

Lots on this, but mostly related to BDC Definitions as far as I recall. Make sure you are familiar with the kind of XML that can be edited for the Search Core results page. What kind of fields are there.

Refer the book in next section

Audiences

Pay careful attention to the API and learn the basics of the AudienceManager and what you can do with it

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.portal.audience.audiencemanager.aspx

Personally, it was bit easier for me on User Profile, Audience, Search and BDC as I have used them extensively in my last project. I would surely advice anyone taking this test to write some code on User Profile and audience targeting.

Inside Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

Author : Patrick Tisseghem

Language : English

In my opinion, no study can be termed as complete without going through the book. I bought this book one year ago while preparing for MOSS 2007 Configuration exam. This has really been helpful in passing in the exams. This book provides great overview of all the functionality of MOSS specially Search. I highly recommend it.

This book provides:

· Build collaboration and publishing portals for your intranet and extranet

· Customize and brand your site with master pages, CSS, and navigation options

· Programmatically support search administration and execute search queries

· Create scripts to customize the provisioning flow of your portal

· Use the Business Data Catalog to integrate collaborative workspaces with line-of-business applications

· Add browser-based form capabilities with InfoPath Forms Services

· Develop Web-based business intelligence solutions using Excel Services

· Apply policy and document routing frameworks to help enforce information management rules

IsInteger Function in C#

2008-10-03T10:48:00.000+10:00

        public bool IsInteger(string strNumber)
        {
            Regex objNotIntPattern = new Regex("[^0-9-]");
            Regex objIntPattern = new Regex("^-[0-9]+$|^[0-9]+$");
            return !objNotIntPattern.IsMatch(strNumber) &&
                    objIntPattern.IsMatch(strNumber);
        }

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content

2008-09-03T17:01:00.000+10:00

This is one of most common issue reported by people on the internet. I also came across this issue and able to solve after doing deep dive into MOSS search.
If you are facing this issue, look for following:

1. Check default content account have read permission to the site. Go to Central Admin-> Application Management -> Policy for web application. Confirm that the default content account have full read permission to the web application

2. Try changing the host file to crawl the local server to eliminate network issues. This is just for testing and should not be done in live environment

3. Make sure none of Web front end server have spaces in their custom headers. Seems crawler don't like spaces in custom headers

4. Finally, this took us a weekend to note. Someone removed the following site permissions "Use Remote Interfaces" and "Use Client Integration Features" to stop developer to connect to MOSS site using SharePoint Designer. This BROKE THE SEARCH CRAWL. So, make sure for your application these permission are enabled. Go to Central Admin-> Application Management -> User Permissions for Web Application to verify this.

Issue searching for custom profile property

2008-08-16T16:48:00.001+10:00

You have added a custom property "Location" in User Profile. When you try to do a search with keyword "india" (there are some users having India as their location), it does not return the people records we expect. However, if you do a by property search by "location:india", it can return the people records.

Resolution:

Turn back on the option "Include values for this property in the search index" option behind "Location" crawled property

1. Open SSP Admin home page
2. Go to Search settings
3. Click Metadata property mappings
4. Click Crawled Properties link
5. Choose the People category (folder)
6. Locate Expertise, Edit/Map Property
7. At the bottom of the page, there should be check box saying "Include values for this property in the search index", click to select it.
8. Force an incremental crawl. If this does not help, please try to do a full crawl.

LDAP User Profile Connection Horror

2008-06-30T15:52:00.003+10:00

Whenever you go to Edit Connection page while editing an import connection, make sure to re-enter the password of user again. MOSS for some reason changes the password and you will be prompted with error like--

The query is not valid based on the specified search base and search filter.

:-(

LDAP Connection in UserProfile

2008-06-30T15:48:00.003+10:00

To create an import connection to LDAP, modify the web.config file of your SSP web site.
Under section add,

Make changes as per your enviornment.

Now, on Edit Connection page in MOSS, Enter provider name as LdapMembership and press ok

CustomWebPart Web Part: Cannot import CustomWebPart Web Part.

2008-06-30T15:45:00.001+10:00

Check if the webpart class is declared public and any assembly referenced by project exists

People Crawl: Error in PortalCrawl Web Service

2008-06-24T15:25:00.001+10:00

When I tried to crawl my content, I received following error:

sps3://SERVERNAME
Error in PortalCrawl Web Service

So people aren't crawled.

If I create an "root" site collection, so in http://SERVERNAME, the error disappears and people is crawled again.

Fix for Content type '0x01010007FF3E057FA8AB4AA42FCB67B453FFC100E214EEE741181F4E9F7ACC43278EE811' not found

2008-06-23T13:34:00.002+10:00

While creating a new page in a collbartion portal, you might come with this error.

This ContentTypeID points to the "PublishingResources" feature.

You will need to activate this feature by running STSADM. The command is

STSADM -o activatefeature -name PublishingResources -url http://MOSS_URL

SharePoint administrative and development Tool

2008-04-15T16:16:00.000+10:00

SharePoint SUSHI

SUSHI is a powerful, user-friendly SharePoint application enabling you to accomplish common SharePoint administrative and development tasks. You can think of SUSHI as a Swiss army knife for SharePoint.
What does the name SUSHI stand for?
SUSHI = SharePoint Utility with a Smart, Helpful Interface

Link

Display raw XML returned by SharePoint Search

2008-04-09T12:39:00.003+10:00

On Search page, modify the XSLT of "Search Core Results" web part to

#?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
#xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
#xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
#xsl:template match="/">
#xmp>
#/xsl:template>
#/xsl:stylesheet>

Replace # with <

NumberToWord Function

2008-04-03T10:52:00.000+11:00

private string[] _englishDigitMatrix = new string[]{"", "Second", "Third", "Fourth","Fifth", "Sixth", "Seventh", "Eighth","Nineth"};

public string changeNumericToWords(int number)

{

string ret = _englishDigitMatrix.GetValue(number - 1).ToString();

return ret;

}

Using Database Mirroring with Office SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services

2008-04-02T10:49:00.001+11:00

Database mirroring is a new technology in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database software that can deliver high availability and high performance solutions for database redundancy. In database mirroring, transactions are sent directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database and server whenever the principal database’s transaction log buffer is written to disk. This technique can keep the mirror database nearly up to date with the principal database. You can optionally use a third server, a witness server, to enable automatic failover from the principal server to the mirror server.
The update includes more prescriptive information on the type of supported topologies. It also recommends SQL connection aliasing for failover within a farm.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83725&clcid=0x409

SharePoint Branding Tool (Themes, Master pages, Site Logos...)

2008-04-02T10:47:00.001+11:00

This tool can be used apply the following actions for multiple Site Collections, and Child Sites:

modify Themes
modify MasterUrl (Master Page)
modify CustomMasterUrl (System Master Page)
modify SiteLogoUrl (Site Logo)
modify SiteLogoDescription (Site Logo Alternative Text)
modify AlternateCssUrl (Custom CSS Style Sheet)
view various properties of sites and themes at a glance
Selection of sites can be filtered by the Site Template used.

http://www.codeplex.com/BrandingTool

Add White space in XSLT

2008-04-01T16:49:00.002+11:00

Add and display Custom Column in SharePoint Search Result

2008-04-01T15:53:00.005+11:00

The results in SharePoint Search are displayed by Search Core Results Web Part. This web part have “Selected Columns” property under “Results Query Options” category which contains an XML string that defines all of the columns that are to be displayed in the search results.

The following is the default list of columns shown in the search results:

Now, we will create a new mapped property named “ListItemId”. Managed properties map to one or more of the crawled properties. They group together the related crawled properties and expose them to the user

The Search Settings in the administrative site of the Shared Services Provider has a Metadata Property Mappings link. Clicking on it brings you to the Metadata Property Mappings page

Now, click on “New Managed Property”
Enter, the property name as: “ListItemId” and make sure you select “Integer” and “Allow this property to be used in scopes”
Note: By default “Type of Information “is set to Text

Now, you need map to the crawled properties. The Add Mapping button pops up a dialog box where you can navigate through all of the crawled properties and select the ones you want to map to the managed property
Enter ows_id and press Find, select the property and click OK.

Note: If you didn’t selected “Type of Information “as Integer, SharePoint is not able to search this property.
Now, start a full Crawl of your content and you should now see your List Item in search results

Use of Today field in SharePoint Formula

2008-03-26T16:56:00.002+11:00

You can't use Today field in Sharepoint calculated field. The workaround is:

Create a custom column named "Today" with type as Date
Now, create a custom field and use above created field in formula
Delete the above created "Today" field.

The Sharepoint will work fine as it start using inbuild Today value for the formula

Install SharePoint workflow without MSI

2008-03-26T16:18:00.005+11:00

To install a custom workflow developed using Visual studio, follow the steps given below-

-- Build your assembly
Drag and drop assembly to C:\Windows\Assembly. Right click and select the properties. Note down the pubclickeytoken for your assembly

-- Create a Feature.xml

-- Create a Workflow.xml

Change Association_FormURN based on your InfoPath Properties

-- Create a feature in SharePoint

Create a folder say "CUSTOM_WORKFLOW" in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATES\FEATURE"
Copy workflow.xml and feature.xml to this folder

-- Install and Activate the feature

Create a batch file with following content in your FEATURE folder
@ECHO OFF

ECHO.
ECHO Activiating and installing the feature...
ECHO.

SET STSADMDIR="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"

%STSADMDIR%\STSADM.EXE -o installfeature -filename CUSTOM_WORKFLOW\feature.xml -force
%STSADMDIR%\STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename CUSTOM_WORKFLOW\feature.xml -url http://SHAREPOINT_URL

ECHO.
ECHO Resetting IIS
ECHO.

IISRESET

-- Run the batch file

Hurry, you could now see your workflow in Workflow settings of List