Aaron Saikovski's Information Worker Weblog

My Blog is moving!

2008-07-22T19:59:00.001-07:00

After almost 4 years of blogging on BlogSpot I am moving my blog over to MSDN:

My new blog can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/AaronSaikovski

I wont be updating any links on my old site.

MCS Australia services offerings

2008-07-14T05:02:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of the service offerings that Microsoft services provdes:

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/services/microsoftservices/default.mspx

MOSS/WSS content deployment rollup packages availability

2008-07-02T17:53:00.001-07:00

Found an article on Joel Oleson's blog (Aka Sharepoint Joel) that the content deployment hotfixes are out.

Here are links to the KB articles for the content deployment rollups.

WSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952698

MOSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952704/

Joel also recommends "that EVERY SharePoint customer read the KBs, because some of the listed issues that are fixed are even broader than content deployment".

You can request the downloads for the hotfixes from the following links:

WSS - http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=952698&kbln=en-us

MOSS - http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=952704&kbln=en-us

Remember you need to install the WSS hotfix first then the MOSS fix. Rebooting between installing the fixes might be a good idea.

Mindsharp Training in Australia

2008-06-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

I recently got an email from Fellow MVP Kathy Hughes about some exciting Mindsharp training that is coming to our shores.
Here are the details:

Combined Knowledge Asia Pacific are proud to announce the upcoming SharePoint Summit week, during this exclusive event we will welcome SharePoint Experts and MVP’s Ben Curry and Todd Bleeker of Mindsharp US , Steve Smith MVP from the UK and Kathy Hughes MVP from Australia to deliver our SharePoint 2007 Administrator, Developer Tracks, Search and Designer classes.
These courses will be delivered at our Sydney venue on the week of August 25th 2008 and will be a great opportunity for you to learn from some of the world’s leading SharePoint experts.
Places are limited, to secure yours please contact Sales e-mail: sales@combined-knowledge.com or
go to: http://www.combined-knowledge.com.au/ for more details

Its official - I am joining Microsoft Services Australia!

2008-06-03T17:25:00.001-07:00

The time has come for me to leave the normal SharePoint world behind, surrender my Groove MVP and accept my much coveted Microsoft blue badge.

I am grabbing my kit and moving to Microsoft Australia, more specifically Microsoft Consulting Services Australia (MCS) as a Senior Consultant, specialising in all things SharePoint. (Of Course ;-) )

This is a MASSIVE career jump for me as I get to work on large projects both here in Australia and overseas. I will also be able to participate in the MCS SharePoint Ranger program as well. Sweet! On top of that I can tap into the Global MCS community and bug the product teams when needed.

Having access to a global brand and being able to reach out to people all over the globe to solve customer problems is something that I have been missing for a while.

This is definitely a major step up for my career and allows me to focus on much larger/global scale projects while improving on my people & partner management skills. I will be taking a step back somewhat and doing less hands on development work (hey that's what gold partners are for) and working on more architecture, pre-sales work and of course troubleshooting.

I also need to select a secondary technical skill (non-SharePoint related) and am somewhat undecided what this should be at this stage. I am thinking of pursuing Unified Communications - Office communicator or even Exchange 2007. But I need to put a bit more thought into this.

As part of joining MCS, I get to go to Redmond for three weeks to attend MSU (Microsoft University) to learn the Microsoft way and get trained up in all MCS goodness. I feel like Kane from Kung Fu embarking on the enlightened path to kung fu greatness.

I also get to attend the cool events like TechReady and see all the really cool stuff.

This is going to be very exciting. I am looking forward to meeting my fellow 'softies and my new local colleagues.

I hopefully will be allowed to blog and take photos about my adventures in Redmond and share my experiences with you all.

I also will be moving this blog, but for now it will stay where it is. So watch this space!

MOSS 2007/WSS 3.0 - Solution Development

2008-05-26T19:58:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: WSS 3,MOSS 2007,Solution development

Lately http://www.ozmoss.com/ as been alive with chatter about solution development and packaging. Jeremy Thake has a great blog post in regards to addressing some of the biggest questions around this. His article can be found here

The key takeaway is that all your custom development should be done through solution packages and activated/deactivated through features regardless of which tool you use to build them. My preference is WSP Builder, but its ok to use other tools as well.

When uninstalling the solution should also clean up after itself, similar to an .MSI in windows. This should be the case in SharePoint also.

The big challenge is moving between environments (Dev, QA, Prod), but using tools like Echo for SharePoint and packaging your code/resources into .WSP files is best practice in my mind.

Any comments?

Presenting at the SBTUG this Wednesday 28th May

2008-05-25T22:20:00.001-07:00

I will be presenting my always popular "Introduction to Groove 2007" presentation at the Sydney Business Technology User Group (SBTUG) this Wednesday night at 6:30pm.

Hope to see you there!!

Where: Microsoft, North Ryde, Sydney

Time: 6:00pm

Web site: http://www.sbtug.com/

Presenting at the Sydney Windows Infrastructure User Group tomorrow night!

2008-05-18T17:51:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Groove,MVP,Infrastructure,collaboration

I will presenting my talk on Collaborating with Groove (with and without SharePoint) with an infrastructure focus. I hope to see you all there.

More details can be found here.

The talk will kick off at 6pm-ish.

The address details are as follows:

AMP - Healey Room, Ground Floor
50 Bridge St Sydney

DoggieRescue needs your help!!!

2008-05-13T18:19:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: DoggieRescue,save a dog,adopt a dog

I got an email yesterday telling me something quite disturbing. The kennels at DoggieRescue are full. That means they cannot accept any more dogs from the pound, nor can they accept any more dogs that have been dumped/found/left to fend for themselves. This is scary!

They have to turn dogs away, which means they will have to be put down as they have nowhere else to go. This is very sad and wrong!!!

Why is this happening?

People seem to be dumping many more dogs due to financial hardship/difficult circumstances. This normally, sadly happens straight after christmas as people dump the dogs they got as presents or bought from a petshop. But it is only May!!

This has to stop.

What can you do?

Please visit the DoggieRescue website and either foster or adopt a dog. By doing this you will save not one life but two. You will make a space for another little dog to be saved as well as having the joy of having a loving and caring pet of your very own.

My wife and I fostered a little dog (Heinz) and decided to make him a permanent resident in our house as we both fell in love with him. Now he is a part of the family and loving it.

Here a picture of Heinz settling in:

Please do your bit and spread the word, or better still adopt/foster a dog today.

MOSS 2007 - Changing the port for central admin

2008-05-05T22:51:00.001-07:00

If you want to safely and easily change the port that SharePoint Central admin is running on fire up a command prompt and issue the following command:

stsadm -o setadminport -port XXXX

Where XXXX is the port you want to change SCA to.

Nice and easy. No reboots or IISresets needed

STSADM is truly the UBER SP tool.

Technorati Tags: MOSS 2007,Central Admin

REMIX '08 is on in Australia!

2008-04-15T20:23:00.001-07:00

Drop by the Microsoft stand and say howdy, I will be joined by fellow MVPs as we will be working the stand.

Come by and ask us any questions or just drop by to have a chat.

Check for more details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/remix08/index.aspx

Hope to see you there!

Groove 2007 - File sharing workspaces are not support on 64bit Windows!

2008-04-07T17:48:00.001-07:00

Technorati Tags: Groove,File sharing

I had a colleague who recently was running 64 bit Vista and tried to create a File sharing workspace in Groove 2007 and got the following error:

This is a "documented feature" but is documented here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/HA102231201033.aspx

Workaround:

Instead create a standard workspace and add the Files tool and you should be able to share files as per normal.

Find a Groove MVP near you!

2008-04-02T03:07:00.001-07:00

Click here to find a Groove MVP near you.

And the "Groovy" jokes keep coming :-)

2008-04-01T16:38:00.001-07:00

I have been flooded with emails about being awarded a Groove MVP and here are some of the funny images that I have received:

1) From Frank Arrigo:

He suggested that all the Groove MVPs all band together and call ourselves the "Groovie Goolies" - Like it

2) From Chris O'Connor (Aka the Grumpy Wookie):

There had to be an Austin Powers image sooner or later.

Keep em coming!

Received an MVP award for Groove!

2008-04-01T15:01:00.001-07:00

I was very happy this morning as I got an email from Microsoft indicating that I had received an MVP Award for Groove!

As far as I know I am the first Groove MVP in Australia/NZ.

Yippee!

My MVP profile can be found here

Presenting at the Sydney Windows Infrastructure Usergroup - May20th

2008-03-30T16:47:00.001-07:00

I will be presenting on 'Integrating Groove into your Enterprise' at the Sydney Infrastructure User Group on May 20th.

SWIUG website: http://www.swiug.org.au/

Address:

Healey Room, Ground Floor
50 Bridge St Sydney

Time: 6PM

I hope to have prizes to give away! Hope to see you there.

Workaround - "There are no page layout files available in the master page library of the top level site."

2008-03-30T16:19:00.001-07:00

I had a client report a strange error the other day when they were trying to create new publishing pages and I thought I would share a workaround that seems to have solved the problem.

Here is the error:

My first reaction was to query what changed ( or what the client changed ;-) ) but they mentioned that they were creating new publishing pages all day based on a common page layout through the UI but then they started to get the above error. End users could no longer create and author new pages through the UI. But I found I could create pages through SPD with no problems. Very strange!

Initially I thought that we may have to restore everything from backup but that seemed a little drastic. I sat down and thought about it for a bit and in a caffeine fuelled haze came to the conclusion that it must be something to do with the content types and publishing pages loosing their associations.

To get around this problem I found that by changing the default content types and page positioning it fixed the error. Simply move the positions of the items around (by reordering them), clicking OK and putting them back to their original position.

I would be keen to hear if others have experienced this and if my above workaround fixes their problems also.

www.ozmoss.com now has 200 active subscribers!

2008-03-26T22:58:00.001-07:00

Thanks to all who have signed up!

My code and presentations are now available up on Live SkyDrive

2008-03-15T21:41:00.001-07:00

Sample Code can be found here & My Presentations can be found here

Presenting at the Sydney SharePoint Usergroup

2008-03-15T20:47:00.001-07:00

I will be presenting at the Sydney SharePoint Usergroup next Tuesday 18th March starting at 5:30/6pm.

I will be doing my presentation that I did at the Office DevCon in November 2007. I hope you can make it along.

More details can be found here.

Creating News Article summaries with the Content Query Web Part & XSLT

2008-03-10T18:00:00.001-07:00

Recently I was at a client site and I needed to create a News article summary listing on the front page of a portal using the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) and I found the following tutorials very helpful. (This is assuming you are using WCM to publish pages.)

http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/CustomItemStyle.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/archive/2006/10/25/configuring-and-customizing-the-content-query-web-part.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447557.aspx

Using a combination of the above three sites I worked out how to use XSLT and the CQWP to achieve this. I am sharing this so you don't have to do any experimentation like I did to get this to work properly. The above articles cover this in a little more broad detail but I needed something that specifically shows a byline image, a title and a description. Something simple and quick. I wanted the ability to click on the title that would link to the actual article.

(Apologies for the very lengthy post)

This post follows on from the article - Create a publishing page layout You will need to build a page layout with an edit mode panel that contains a Rollup Image page field, a byline content field. By putting these into an edit panel, these wont be visible when the page is published/viewed. They will only be accessible during page editing mode. The rest of the page and content fields can be place anywhere within the main PlaceHolder.

Its important to note that you will need SharePoint Designer (SPD) to carry out these steps.

Here's how to get this to work:

1) Create a Site Content Type - Create a new site content type for your new article page. I usually base my new page on an existing article page

Go to Site settings..Site content types..

Create a new site content type

Create a new site content type. select 'Page layout content types' as the parent content type and select 'Article Page' as the parent content type.

Put this new content type into a new group as well. I usually give it a meaningful name so its easy to find.

After clicking 'OK' the new content type has been created.

2) SPD create a new publishing page - Next open SPD and select File..Open Site. You should be presented with a site folder structure as in the following image.

(You may be prompted to authenticate against the WSS server)

Next (In SPD) go to File..New..SharePoint Content. Then select 'Sharepoint Publishing'

Make sure you select the content type group you created in Step 1 and the content type you created as well (see following image).

Give your new page a URL name and a title and select OK.

You should have a brand spanking new publishing page ready to be customised. (This will be based on the content type you created earlier.)

3) Customising the Publishing page - (Still in SPD) Drag and Drop a 'EditModePanel' Server control into the 'PlaceHolderMain' on your page - This enabled the "hiding" of page fields from being viewed when the page has been published. These hidden fields are only accessible during editing of if we are referencing them via XSLT (more later)

Into the 'EditModePanel', Drag and drop the 'Rollup Image' page field control and the 'ByLine' content field control. You can also add the 'Scheduling Start Date' page field as well. But it isn't required at this stage.

At this stage you can drag and drop the 'Description' page field and the 'Page Content' content fields into the 'PlaceHolderMain'. These should be placed outside the 'EditModePanel'. A HTML table can be wrapped around these to make these align etc.

Save the page and you might have to check it in an approve it. You are ready to create a new page based on the publishing page that you created in step 3.

4) Create a new page from a publishing page - Go to 'Site Actions'..'Create Page'. Give your page a title and a URL. Make sure you select the page layout you created earlier. Click 'Create'

The new empty page has been created using the new page layout. You can now enter content and publish this page straight away. Enter some content, images etc and check-in the page and publish. The new page will be saved.

5) Add CQWP - Add a Content Query Web part (CQWP) to a web part zone on the home page

6) Modify the file 'ItemStyle.xsl' in SPD - For the opened site go to, 'Style Library', 'XSL Style Sheets'. Then checkout 'ItemStyle.xsl'. Note that by changing this file you are breaking the styles as dictated by the site definition. Thus making it customised. By changing this file we can add our own XSL template styles.

Open the 'ItemStyle.xsl' file and copy the following template code just above the last </xsl:stylesheet> tag. (Important)

<xsl:template name="ShowRollUp" match="Row[@Style='ShowRollUp']" mode="itemstyle">
<xsl:variable name="SafeLinkUrl">
<xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetSafeLink">
<xsl:with-param name="UrlColumnName" select="'LinkUrl'"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="DisplayTitle">
<xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetTitle">
<xsl:with-param name="Title" select="@Title"/>
<xsl:with-param name="UrlColumnName" select="'LinkUrl'"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="LinkTarget">
<xsl:if test="@OpenInNewWindow = 'True'" >_blank</xsl:if>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="SafeImageHtml">
<xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.GetColumnDataForUnescapedOutput">
<xsl:with-param name="Name" select="'PublishingRollupImage'" />
<xsl:with-param name="MustBeOfType" select="'Image'" />
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>
<div id="linkitem" class="item">
<xsl:if test="string-length($SafeImageHtml) != 0">
<div class="image-area-left" align="left">
<xsl:value-of disable-output-escaping="yes" select="$SafeImageHtml" />
</div>
</xsl:if>
</div>
<div class="link-item">
<xsl:call-template name="OuterTemplate.CallPresenceStatusIconTemplate"/>
<a href="{$SafeLinkUrl}" mce_href="{$SafeLinkUrl}" target="{$LinkTarget}" title="{@LinkToolTip}">
<xsl:value-of select="$DisplayTitle"/>
</a>
<div class="description">
<xsl:value-of select="@Description" />
</div>
</div>
</xsl:template>

(Optional step) Also while debugging it might be worthwhile to use the following template code, This displays all the fields that are available to be manipulated via the XSLT query. You need to change the Item Style to 'MyDebug" for this to show up (Thanks to Heather Solomon for this tip):

<xsl:template name="MyDebug" match="Row[@Style='MyDebug']" mode="itemstyle">
<xsl:for-each select="@*">
P:<xsl:value-of select="name()" />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

Save and close the 'ItemStyle.xsl' file also check it in and approve it.

7) CQWP Query Display - Go back to the web part page and select 'Modify Shared Web part' on the CQWP. Expand the 'Query' option and ensure that the query is showing items from the 'Pages Library' and is showing both items from the 'Content Type Group' and showing items of the created content type. In this case I am using the 'Dev pages' content type group and the 'Dev Pub Page' content type.

Scroll down to the Styles section and change the Item style to 'ShowRollup'. Click Ok.

You should see the CQWP displaying a summary of the pages library, filtering by the defined content type and displaying the Byline image, Title and description:

Too easy! (once you know how, especially in light that I am not a super XSLT guru)

Microsoft Search Server 2008 has RTM'ed

2008-03-04T20:51:00.001-08:00

People have been asking me what the deal is with Search Server 2008 and MOSS 2007 search. I think the following table illustrates the main differences.

The key thing to note is that MOSS search includes the BDC, People search and the underlying infrastructure that only MOSS provides. But for a free search solution, the express edition of search server is pretty hard to beat.

Click here for more details.

Customised Vs. Uncustomised pages in WSS V 3.0

2008-03-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

I was recently teaching a MOSS/WSS developer course to a bunch of students and was asked what the difference was between "ghosted" and "unghosted" pages was.
My definitions goes something like this:

Customised = unghosted
Uncustomised = ghosted

Confused?

This basically means that uncustomised pages are stored on each front end web server and are based on the predefined site definition. These are commonly referred to as "ghosted" pages. These are generally based on the "out of the box" site definition templates.

When these "ghosted" pages are edited and differ from the site definition, they become known as "unghosted" pages and are now stored in the content database instead of the web front ends.
These pages have been "detached" from their parent site definition. Luckily these can be "reattached" using SharePoint designer.

Also WSS has two kinds of pages, site pages and application pages:

Site pages - These can be customised on a per site basis and cannot contain code behind, like ASP.net pages can. That is what web parts and user controls are for. These pages are "uncustomised" or "ghosted" by default.

Application pages - cannot be customised on a per site basis but can contain code behind, similar to ASP.Net. These need to be deployed to each web front end server and a single copy of an application page is used for all WSS sites. These are served out of the _layout virtual directory.

Hopefully this makes some sense.

Useful SharePoint links

2008-03-03T01:10:00.001-08:00

TOOLS & SDKs
Return of SmartPart v1.3 for SharePoint 2007 Released!
http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2008/02/14/return-of-smartpart-v1-3-for-sharepoint-2007-released.aspx

Return of SmartPart v1.3
http://www.codeplex.com/smartpart/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=10697

SharePoint Solution Installer
http://www.codeplex.com/sharepointinstaller

WSPBuilder
http://www.codeplex.com/wspbuilder

Integrating ASP.NET AJAX with SharePoint
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mike/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=3

Ontolica SharePoint Explorer
http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20Products/Ontolica%20SharePoint%20Explorer.aspx

SharePoint Spy
http://www.echotechnology.com/products/spy/Pages/default.aspx

What's New in the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862692.aspx

What's New in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb861863.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=05E0DD12-8394-402B-8936-A07FE8AFAFFD&displaylang=en

SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kit
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en

BOOKS
Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Unleashed (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-SharePoint-2007-Unleashed-Michael/dp/0672329476/ref=pd_bbs_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204154215&sr=8-6

Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Administrator's Companion (Hardcover)
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft%C2%AE-Office-SharePoint%C2%AE-Administrators-Companion/dp/0735622825/ref=pd_bbs_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204154215&sr=8-8

Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-SharePoint-Services-Developer/dp/0735623201/ref=pd_bbs_sr_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204154215&sr=8-10

Failure when converting MOSS license types

2008-02-21T17:55:00.001-08:00

I found an interesting problem today when preparing some VPCs for a course I am running next week and I discovered that my MOSS licenses had expired and that they were running the trial version.

I needed to get around this reasonably quickly so I went with the full retail key. It should be a matter of entering in the product key, clicking next and all should be good to go. Right? Wrong!

Here are the steps to recreate the problem:

1) Go to central administration..Convert License type:

2) This is the version of MOSS I am using prior to activation, note the 'Trial' version:

I entered a retail product key & click Ok. After a while the conversion operation starts.

4) Next I got the license conversion operation error:

AARGH!!!!

Here's my workaround:

1) Simply ignore the error raised by the activation tool. (trust me on this)

2) Run the sharepoint configuration tool but select "No, do not create a default site" option:

3) Go back in to central admin, Check the current license type and verify that the word "Trial" has gone from your licence type.

I found sometimes that the above steps may not always work as expected. If so do the following:

* Check your regional settings and also verify your date/time settings match the host pc

* run IISRESET

You should be good to go.

Windows Live Sky Drive is now available in Australia!

2008-02-21T14:51:00.001-08:00

WooHoo! This is great news!

The SkyDrive team certainly has been busy:

1) The storage limit has been increased to 5GB

2) Its now available in 38 countries, including Australia

3) The team has made many bug fixes and improvements including making it faster.

The official blog entry is here.

You can sign up here.

Best of all its free!!

Synchronising tables with SharePoint lists

2008-02-20T21:00:00.001-08:00

A colleague of mine (George Freny) today mentioned that there was a nice feature whereby you can synchronise SharePoint lists from Excel..well in the Office 2003 wave anyway.

Out of the box with Office 2007 this isn't possible unless you download the following Excel Add-in.

"The add-in allows you to publish a read-write list to Windows SharePoint Services"

Nice one George!

Hyper-V wont start on Windows Server 2008 RTM

2008-02-20T20:54:00.001-08:00

I found something strange today while playing around with Windows Server 2008 x64 & Hyper-V.

I added Hyper-V as a server role and rebooted and found that the service just wouldn't start. Very weird!

After some searching around the forums, I found the following:

1) Go to control panel then double click regional and language options.

2) In the formats tab set current format to English (United States) and apply

2) Next in Administrative tab click change system locale and set to English (United States)

3) Most importantly - Click "Copy to reserved accounts". Make sure you select both the Defaults & System options

4) Click apply.

5) Reboot and the Hyper-V service should start:

As this is a beta release, I suspect this will be fixed in an update or a service pack.

First Usergroup presentation for 2008!

2008-02-19T21:59:00.001-08:00

I will be presenting my updated "SharePoint - Developer tips, tricks and tools" at the Sydney SharePoint Users group on March 18th and will be updating the content with all the new bits that Microsoft and various other parties have released.

I will be covering the following topics:

SharePoint as a Developer platform
How to get started
Common tools
WSS/MOSS SP1 changes
Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 3.0 (VseWSS 1.1 & 2.0)
Windows Server 2008 as a developer platform and 64 Bit
And of course the demos

Thanks to Ivan Wilson of SharePoint Gurus for allowing me to present.

Hope to see you all there.

Sara's Blogging!

2008-02-19T17:40:00.001-08:00

A colleague of mine is now blogging. Check out her blog here. She is a cricket mad, SharePoint geekette.

Workaround: PDF icon not showing up in search

2008-02-19T15:44:00.001-08:00

This seems to be a common problem whereby authenticated users (non-Admins) cannot see the PDF icon when doing a search but administrators can see the image.

(You must FIRST install and configure the PDF IFilter for this to work)

This is a good old fashioned NTFS permissions problem.

To get this to work, do the following:

1) Go to the folder where you put the PDF icon, normally this would be:

\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Images

2) Right click on the image and ensure that the image permissions are set to inherit from the folder permissions.

3) Also ensure that the Images directory has Inherit from parent permission as well.

4) Run IISRESET and off you go.

(Thanks to my colleague Jag for this tip)

The DVD format wars have been fought and won. The winner....Blu-Ray

2008-02-18T18:02:00.001-08:00

(Not SharePoint related but interesting nonetheless)

I have been reading of late how Toshiba has thrown in the towel and admitted defeat on its HD-DVD format.

"No one answered the phone at Toshiba's public relations office in Tokyo." :-)

Microsoft implemented HD-DVD as the standard for its XBox gaming console and now there are rumours of a Blu-Ray enabled XBox to be coming soon.

This brings me back to the good old days of VHS Vs Beta wars.

But as Toshiba admits defeat I wonder how long before we start getting our MSDN subscriptions on a few Blu-Ray discs.

Interesting times ahead......

Workaround - VSeWSS 1.1 final release – Breaks previous CTP projects

2008-02-11T21:50:00.001-08:00

Paul Turner has a nice article if you are currently deploying projects using the CTP of the VSeWSS and have upgraded to the V1.1 RTM build of VSeWSS.

Nice work Paul and very timely too.

Screen grabbing using OneNote 2007

2008-02-11T21:31:00.001-08:00

I am not a heavy user of OneNote, but the more I use it, the more I really like it. Ian Palangio showed me a neat trick a while back and I thought I would share it.

To setup screen grabbing in OneNote 2007 perform the following:

Right click on the OneNote icon in the desk tray and Select options:

Navigate to screen clipping defaults and select 'Copy To Clipboard Only':

Once this is option is set you start the screen capturing using the Windows Key + S (WinKey+S). It will make the screen go opaque and you can select the screen region to capture with your mouse. It will copy the image to the clipboard and you can simply paste where you need it.

I use this all the time for inserting images into documents, blog posts etc.

Very handy and free (if you have OneNote 2007 installed)

Announcing the Final Release of VSeWSS 1.1 (and the upcoming version 1.2)!

2008-02-11T17:50:00.001-08:00

I don't normally like to blog about when a product has RTM'ed but this was too good to miss.

Microsoft has announced that the final release of the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services, or VseWSS 1.1 as its known. This is a 1.1 release and sadly we have to wait until V1.2 for Visual Studio 2008 support.

You still need to have these extensions installed on a server running WSS/SharePoint, so you can't run these extensions on a Vista or XP pc. We have to keep running our development environment on Virtual pc for a little while longer.

For those SharePoint developers out there, this is great news as this will greatly increase your productivity as you don't have to worry with mucking around with 'feature.xml' or 'elementmanifest.xml' files by hand anymore.

Check out the feature list (Taken from the Blog post):

"WSP View", aka "Solution Package editing"
- No more hidden, non-editable solution content!
- Create new Features
- Reorder Elements between Features
- Conflict validation against existing Features
- Rename existing Features
- Change Feature activation order
Visual Basic support!
New Item Templates:
- "List Instance" project item
- "List Event Handler" project item
- “SharePoint Template” item template, e.g. "layouts" files
Faster F5 speed (The tool no longer performs an IISReset. Now it only recycles the app pool.)
Solution Generator: you can now choose which lists should be included when exporting a site.
Many bug fixes, e.g.
- No more GUIDs in Feature Names
- Support complex project names, e.g. with periods.
- Can deploy assemblies to the bin folder, instead of GAC

More info can be found here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/02/11/announcing-the-final-release-of-vsewss-1-1-and-the-upcoming-version-1-2.aspx

I will write up a more detailed posting in the next few days on how to get started and some tips and tricks.

Another exam done - 70-630: configuring MOSS

2008-02-07T19:49:00.001-08:00

I did the configuring MOSS exam today and passed with flying colours. This test had 51 questions as opposed to the WSS exam which had only 41.

Make sure you do as many of the measureup or transcender exams to get yourself ready for these guys.

Generally I find the practice tests to be quite a bit more difficult than the real thing. So if you pass the practice tests, you should pass the real thing.

Next is to move on to the 2 sharepoint developer exams.

What is Groove? - Revisited

2008-02-07T17:28:00.001-08:00

In October 2007 I wrote a post discussing Groove and what it is exactly.

Groove can be described as easily as follows:

It is a peer to peer rich desktop collaboration client application targeted towards small/medium groups that facilitates the secure sharing of information.

In a nutshell is allows me to create a shared workspace where I can put files, invite people to that workspace so they can use those files and any updates are automatically synchronised to all people that are members of that workspace. Simple?

Here is a perfect scenario:

I have a large number of documents that I want to send to some external clients. These documents weigh in at 250MB. I cant email them as they are too confidential. The client wants the documents today and they are located in another part of the country. What do I do??

Easy.

Fire up Groove
Create a workspace
Drop the documents into the shared workspace folder.
Invite the clients to be read-only participants of the workspace. The clients accept your invite, they join the workspace
Groove synchronises the documents to all workspace attendees. Documents delivered.

Done.

Another exam done - 70-631: configuring WSS services V3.0

2008-02-06T15:00:00.001-08:00

I passed the 70-631 exam yesterday with flying colours. Now for 70-630: Configuring MOSS

Adelaide SharePoint User Group has launched

2008-01-30T16:19:00.001-08:00

Its good to see the Australia SharePoint community growing at a vast rate. Daniel Brown & Co. have setup the Adelaide SharePoint Users Group.

More details here: http://www.danielbrown.id.au/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=8

They are waiting on a domain name, web hosting and the like. I hope to get down there soon to do some presentations and attend.

Good luck team!

SharePoint and the 64 bit world

2008-01-22T16:34:00.001-08:00

Recently I was chatting to a Microsoft guy I know and he was talking about the future directions of the product and he mentioned that the product team is busily working on the next version of MOSS, currently codenamed "SharePoint 14".

Now as part of this development, Microsoft has made a stance on all of its future server products and has announced that SharePoint "14" will ONLY be released on a 64 bit platform. That is there will be no future 32 bit releases.

Please don't bug me with feature questions as I don't know and Microsoft is being tight lipped around the feature set at this stage but the product is slated for a beta release possibly late this year or early next year. I will let you know as soon as I hear anything.

Things to consider:

1) There is no upgrade path from 32 to 64 bit on the same hardware. You will need to move to a new environment. The guys at combined knowledge have a great whitepaper on how to do this. Although it is targeted to Windows server 2008, I am sure it could be used for Windows server 2003

2) Why move to 64 bit? (Source: About performance and capacity planning (Office SharePoint Server)

Memory - 32 bit systems can address only 4GB of memory. 64 bit systems can address 1024GB of memory
Processing - support of up to 64 processors which greatly improves parallel processing
Bus architecture - faster and wider bus architectures, allows more data to be passed to the cache

3) You should not mix 32-bit and 64-bit Web front-end (WFE) servers, but you may use 64-bit database servers in a farm with 32-bit WFE servers and application servers

4) I would suggest running your SQL 2005 back end on a 64bit platform as it benefits from faster indexing, scalability, greater memory support and greater connection support

5 Read this posting from Joel Oleson. He talks about many of the benefits and future directions of the product.

With all these facts in mind I would strongly suggest any current or future SharePoint projects be deployed with 64 bit architectures in place as it will save any upgrade/migration headaches now. I will certainly be suggesting to my clients to go down this road.

www.ozmoss.com now has 170 active members and growing!

2008-01-14T01:09:00.001-08:00

I will be moving www.ozmoss.com soon onto newer hardware but in the meantime I just checked the stats and there is currently 170 active members.

Thanks to everyone who is using this resource as a means of sharing and solving real world problems with SharePoint technologies. Without you this would never have taken off.

Remember to spread the word and keep on posting.

Workaround - WSS v3 RSS reader webpart and ISA server 2004/2006 proxy authentication

2008-01-14T00:53:00.001-08:00

I found this recently while working on a client site and thought I would share this to save you hours of troubleshooting. There are many people who have had the same problem and thought I would add to the confusion ;-)

In order to get the RSS reader webpart working with ISA server and proxy authentication you will need to do the following:

Firstly follow the instructions in Adams blog here..No Really follow Adam's blog!!!

The important thing to note is to ensure you add the following code to your web.config for your WSS site:

<system.net>
   <defaultProxy>
     <proxy bypassonlocal="true" proxyaddress=http://MyProxy:ProxyPort usesystemdefault="false" />
     <bypasslist>
       <add address="SharePointServer.com.au" />
     </bypasslist>
   </defaultProxy>
</system.net>

The next part is to make changes to the ISA server to allow ALL HTTP traffic from your SharePoint server to the outside world. That is allow all outgoing traffic to bypass the filtering rules in ISA server. Not ideal but at least it works.

What I would do if you are concerned about security you could lock this down to individual RSS feeds in ISA server on a feed by feed basis. Block all feeds that aren't in the approved list would be the way to go.

Lastly, the bypass list tells SharePoint to bypass the proxy, similar to the bypass proxy list in Internet explorer.

Access denied to masterpage gallery

2008-01-12T18:41:00.001-08:00

If you get the error "access denied" to the master page gallery and you are member of the administrators group you need to ensure that you are also a member of the designers group as well.

This is a security measure by design and caught me out a few times and i thought i should share it.

Goals for 2008

2008-01-08T16:50:00.001-08:00

Here is a list of my goals for 2008. This is a list for myself to act as a guide throughout the year.

Become totally paperless and do as much as possible electronically.
Reduce my carbon footprint by using less energy, use the stairs where possible and drive less
Train hard and obtain my Wing Chun Level 1 grading
Gain more leadership and people management skills
Work towards becoming a though leader in SharePoint and related technologies
Do much more presenting at user groups, conferences and the like
Write more original and in-depth technical blog posts
Become more fluent in German and aim to become more conversational
Watch much less TV and read more books
Do much more volunteer work at DoggieRescue and teach more volunteer computer courses for kids and the underprivileged

Signing off for 2007...

2007-12-22T21:34:00.001-08:00

Merry Xmas and a look forward to a great 2008. This will be my last blog post for 2007.

Be safe and be happy :-)

Leaving Readify....

2007-12-22T21:03:00.001-08:00

I recently left Readify to join SDM as a Senior Solution Specialist, specialising in all things SharePoint. In my new role I won't be cutting as much code and will be involved with the pre-sales process a lot more. The role will allow me to mentor and guide more junior staff as well as being able to learn and grow at the same time both technically and professionally.

I will hopefully be able to work on my SharePoint deployer project (more details around this soon) in 2008 and of course I will still be presenting at user groups, conferences and will be writing a lot more meaty and technically detailed blog posts in 2008. So watch this space :-)

I would like to thank the folks at Readify for making my time there very enjoyable and of course working with some very smart people. As the IT community in Australia is pretty small and I am sure we will all see each other around the traps.

I start at SDM in January 7th and look forward to meeting my new team mates.

You can email me at: aaron_DOT_saikovski@SDM_DOT_com_DOT_au

Get SharePoint training on your desktop!

2007-12-08T21:19:00.001-08:00

Taken from the intro:

"Download a simple file to get the grand tour of the latest features and changes, including automated workflows to track approval cycles, business dashboards showing how well you are performing on your goals, and syncing documents to Outlook. The training, which includes articles, videos, and interactive tutorials, will lead you step-by-step through the rich features of Office SharePoint Server."

More info here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102488011033.aspx

RIP Evel Knievel

2007-11-30T20:17:00.001-08:00

One of my childhood idols has passed away today aged 69.

The news report can be found here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22852480-2,00.html

Anyone who can jump a ravine on a jet bike wearing a white jump suit is a legend in my book.

Surveys and Workflow "issue"

2007-11-29T20:18:00.001-08:00

Taken from the KB article:

The status of a workflow appears as "Failed to Start" when you try to start a workflow from a survey response in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926370

The issue is "Although the Workflows option appears when you click the arrow next to a survey response, you cannot start a workflow from a survey response."

Not sure how this one got missed!

Tool of the day: MOSS 2007 Profile Import Tool

2007-11-29T20:16:00.001-08:00

A tool for importing users and updating their profile properties in MOSS 2007 when using forms based authentication. Nice!

The project can be found here:

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=sptoolbox&ReleaseId=8728

Been busy..

2007-11-29T20:07:00.001-08:00

Apologies for not blogging but I've been flat out with client projects and course delivery.

Here are some projects in the early planning stages that will be released in 2008:

WSS/MOSS Power Deployer (Kinda like Tzunami but also does code and customisations located on the filesystem and deploys to remote machines) - Any comments, contributions would be appreciated
WCF File Transfer V2.0 - based on .NET 3.5 and developed in VS2008

Also I will be doing some in-depth blog posts as well. Watch this space. :-)

Visual Studio 2008 has RTM'ed and hit MSDN

2007-11-19T12:37:00.001-08:00

People start your downloads..

Visual Studio 2008 RTM next week

2007-11-17T12:19:00.001-08:00

Check out MSDN for the RTM bits of VS 2008.

more info here

List Views and Audiences in MOSS 2007 - Unexpected behaviour

2007-11-15T22:04:00.001-08:00

Here is something that I found (again while teaching a MOC course) around audiences, list views and webparts:

You can target audiences for list items within a list view and enable audience targeting in the list settings itself for that list as expected
When entering a new item in the list you can add a target audience for that individual list item, this will be filtered based on that audience and membership to that audience
You can set the target audience on the list view webpart itself but it doesn't seem to filter based on the target audience - Weird! not sure why that functionality is there anyway.
It appears that list views are not target audience aware at the webpart level. At the list item level they behave as expected but not when viewing through a webpart. It seems to ignore the audience filtering.

Workaround:

Use the 'Content Query Webpart' instead of the listview webpart to view list items that rely on audience membership filtering.

Make sure you select the following options in the Content Query webpart settings:

Select 'Show items from the following list', and set it to your respective list in this case it is the 'Announcements' list
Set the list type to be 'Announcements'
Content type group should be set to 'List Content Types' as we are using a List content type
Show items of this content type, again in this case it is 'Announcements'
Audience targeting. Make sure both 'Apply Audience filtering' and 'Include items that are not targeted' are both selected otherwise the filtering won't work
Also make sure that under the 'Advanced' section of the content query webpart settings you have left the 'Target Audiences' blank.

These settings can be illustrated below:

SharePoint Content and Customisation migration between environments - The Solution (Possibly)

2007-11-15T21:10:00.001-08:00

Possible solutions: (Thanks to Ishai Sagi for his thoughts on these)

1) Custom Design: Deploy New Site Designs Across Your Workplace: Corasworks design migrator

2) Migrate code and customisations on the filesystem: Simply use features and solution packages

3) Content migration: Tzunami: http://www.tzunami.com/ or Metalogix: http://www.metalogix.net/

My thoughts...

** Use my (as yet unnamed) free tool that does everything that the above 3 points will do and more. Except mine will be free and on codeplex ;-)

MOSS 2007 Crawler and NTFS file share permissions - gotcha

2007-11-15T19:42:00.001-08:00

I recently was teaching the MOC course '5061A: Implementing Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007' and came across an interesting "feature" with NTFS file permissions and MOSS crawling and indexing of file shares.

1) When MOSS crawls file shares it carries across the NTFS permissions as well as part of that import. So when a user searches for content using a scope that includes the file shares, the NTFS permissions overrides everything regardless of the scope permissions. So any security trimming occurs via NTFS and not via security scopes.

2) Also if you change the NTFS permissions (through windows explorer) and don't happen to perform a "full import" of the crawler. If you simply run an incremental import then the crawler doesn't pickup the fact that something has changed at the base level NTFS permissions. You need to do a full import again to pickup the permission changes. If you don't re-run the crawler it assumes the same NTFS permissions are in effect.

Something to watch out for...

Been busy presenting..

2007-11-14T01:45:00.001-08:00

I have finished my latest presenting gigs. I did the RDN WCF primer yesterday (twice) and re-presented (if there is such a word) to the Newcastle my talk on WSS/MOSS developer tips and tricks.

Now to work out my next project or presentation...I have a few ideas and will keep you all posted :-)

WCF Primer series

2007-11-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

I will be presenting a high level 30min talk on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) tomorrow (13th November) in Sydney.

Drop by and get some cool info on what can be done with WCF.

More details here

Reminder: Presenting at the Newcastle coders group on Wed 14th Nov.

2007-11-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

I will be presenting on Wed at the Newcastle coders group on my WSS/MOSS dev tips and tricks talk.
This has proven to be very popular and had many people asking about it.
Hope to see you there.

Office Dev Con Presentation - MOSS/WSS Tips and tricks

2007-11-11T15:09:00.000-08:00

For all of those who have been asking me about my WSS/MOSS dev tips and tricks slides the deck can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/ASaikovski/moss-dev-tips/

Search Server 2008 - Express

2007-11-06T16:08:00.001-08:00

This might have been mentioned on other blogs but here is something cool from Microsoft.

"Our aim for Search Server Express is to give you a free and powerful enterprise search product that’s incredibly easy for you to deploy."

The feature set includes relevancy tuning, security-trimmed search results, and great out-of-the-box administration and reporting.

Nice!

Now to work out if it will integrate and work with WSS3.0....

Check out:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/11/06/announcing-microsoft-search-server-2008-express.aspx

and here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/archive/2007/11/06/announcing-microsoft-search-server-2008-express.aspx

Announcing SharePointPedia!

2007-11-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

From the sharepoint team blog:

"SharePointPedia.com is a web site where people discover and share useful content about SharePoint and SharePoint related products and technologies. It’s a social computing application built on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Anyone with a Windows Live ID may become a registered user and can then submit content recommendations or requests, leave comments, or just vouch for whatever they like."

More details here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/11/05/announcing-sharepointpedia-community-driven-content-recommendations-and-requests.aspx

Extending STSADM.exe with custom commands

2007-11-05T02:31:00.001-08:00

Found this link via Andrew Connell's blog:

http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/2006/09/extending-stsadmexe-with-custom.html

This allows developers to add their own extensions to this already very powerful tool.

Sweet!

SharePoint Content and Customisation migration between environments - The Problem

2007-11-05T02:15:00.000-08:00

I often get asked how can I "easily" migrate all of my site customisations (Site definitions, features etc) and any content between environments. This means moving changed content from Development to Staging and ultimately to Production.

Here is a diagram of the scenario:

Problem 1:

Each environment will operate in its own domain/security boundary and each site collection will have its own credentials and there are firewall restrictions between each of these environments. Also how can we move the changed content between these environments?

Problem 2:

On top of this one has to consider the implications of migrating only the changes made since the last deployment. Performing a backup and restore of sites isn't ideal as you will surely overwrite content that is already in place. You only want to deploy the deltas not everything.

Problem 3:

Can we rollback changes in staging or production of something goes wrong?

I might have found a solution to Problem 2, Enter the "WSS 3.0 - Content Deployment and Migration API".

According to Stefan Goßner you can use the WSS3 content deployment and migration API to do the following:

export an entire site collection
export a specific site inside a site collection including or excluding content in subsites
export a list or document libraries or even of a folder inside a document library
export a single list items or documents from a document library
export dependent objects (like images referenced by a page) by following links
generate as a compressed export file or in uncompressed format
allow export with a define a maximum size for the generated compressed file (multiple export files will be created if required)
allow incremental export of items based on a given change token. This will export all items that have been created, changed or deleted after the timestamp in the change token.
import the exported content with or without identity preservation (means items will keep their GUID or not)
import the exported content under the same or a different parent in the destination database
do link fixup during import

This solves one piece of the puzzle but also raises a few more questions....

Q1: You have to cut some code and piece together various code snippets from MSDN and the like. Are there any free tools to handle this without having to write code? Answer. Not that I can find.

(You can almost hear the gears turning in my head planning something :-) )

Q2: Can you rollback to a previous version if there is an issue with the imported content? Answer. It appears not. So backup before you do anything.

Q3: Can I simply migrate everything the first time around and only deploy the deltas on every subsequent update? Answer. According to the API documentation you can based on a timestamp.

So for now we are stuck with a tricky way to migrate content using a hybrid of solution deployment, backup/restore and installing and activating features all manually. But rest assured I am in the process of working out a way to get around this. So feel free to shoot me an email offering your comments and thoughts.

I did find one tool that can solve the problem but it isnt free. check out: http://www.avepoint.com/products/sharepoint-content-management

Presenting at the Newcastle coders group - Wed 14th Nov 6pm

2007-11-04T23:41:00.001-08:00

I will be presenting at the Newcastle coders group on SharePoint development - Tools, Tips & Tricks. This is the same presentation from the Sydney Office DevCon and due to popular demand I will be presenting this again, so if you missed it the first time around please drop by.

The directions to get to the Newcastle Coders Group (Which Forsyth's IT has nicely offered to host):

http://www.forsythesit.com.au/aboutuslocation.aspx

Hope to see you there.

Awesome Star Wars poster!!

2007-11-04T02:03:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine sent this a while back and heaps of people have asked me about it so here it is.

Sydney Office DevCon 2007 - Done and Dusted!

2007-11-03T22:02:00.001-07:00

I did my presentations at the Office DevCon yesterday (Sat 3rd Nov) and both sessions were packed to the rafters. I have to say I was quite impressed with the numbers

My first session was at 9am and my second one kicked of at 10am.

I presented my first talk on integrating Groove into your enterprise and the loopback adapter in Vista behaved itself and my demo went off without a hitch. (I had full connectivity going between the guest OS and my host PC)

I showed how to create a workspace, send files, scribble on the sketchpad, SharePoint integration and even showed the chess game. ( I feel a groove multiplayer game in the works ;-))

The quality of questions was very good and I think that I really got the Groove message out there and heaps of people were impressed and wanted go to back to the office and start playing immediately.

My work here is done.

My second talk around SharePoint development tools, tips and tricks created quite a stir as many people came up to me afterwards and said "Thank God, we were after something like that". The demos went very well (a little slowly as I need 4gb ram and a faster notebook) and again this was a very full house, I had people standing in the backrows and if I was a rockstar, it would have been a sell out crowd. I will be presenting this same talk in about a week at the Newcastle coders group.

A massive shout out to Graham Seach and all who came to both my sessions.

3 days to go till Office DevCon!

2007-10-29T20:48:00.001-07:00

see you all there!

Backup / Restore and Data Protection Manager 2007 RTM

2007-10-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

Joel Oleson has been busy and he talks about MS Data Protection manager 2007.
Finally a backup solution that "allow you to do either farm restores, database restores, or granular restores on a recovery farm"
awesome!

read more here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/25/backup-restore-and-data-protection-manager-2007-rtm.aspx

Recommendations for SharePoint Application Pool Settings

2007-10-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

Joel Oleson has a great article on SharePoint application pool settings.
It is a great read and explains the do's and dont's.
check out the article here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/10/29/sharepoint-app-pool-settings.aspx

Coolest show on Cable...AfterWorld

2007-10-27T23:37:00.001-07:00

I have been getting in a new show called AfterWorld. It features a guy called Russell Shoemaker who wakes up one day to find 99% of the worlds population "missing" due to a massive EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) and technology for all intensive purposes has ceased to exist. No technology!

Not a new concept if you are into SciFi this topic has kind of been touched on before. see Omega Man, etc...

What makes this show unique is that is doesn't feature any live action but some awesome dialog and cool computer generated cartoon type stills (kind of similar to the Myst games) .

The story and dialogue is captivating. And of you miss any episodes you can download podcasts and even get email reminders for future episodes.

If you like SciFi check out the following links:

http://www.scifitv.com.au/afterworld/Site/

http://myspace.com/scifitv

I am totally hooked.

Workaround - “Error when trying to publish an excel workbook to a SharePoint document library”

2007-10-25T23:46:00.001-07:00

Recently I was teaching Ted Pattison's SPT401 - SharePoint Technology Development course and my students were getting the following error when they were trying to complete the excel services lab:

The error was occurring when they were trying to publish to a document library from the excel client and after some experimentation I found the following solution:

Go to a command prompt
Type “net stop sens”
Hit enter
This stops the “System Event Notification Service”
Retry publishing from excel and it should now work.

(I tried this a few times and was able to repeat this)

www.ozmoss.com now has 125 active subscribers!

2007-10-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

My idea behind this mailing list (well i kinda got the idea from www.oztfs.com) was to make a mailing list for the sharepoint community that is contributed to by the community and grown by the community.
The list now has 125 active users and is growing all the time.

Thanks to all who have made www.ozmoss.com a success!

Presenting WCF Primer for the Readify Developer Network - 13th November Sydney

2007-10-21T23:27:00.001-07:00

I will be presenting a high level 30min talk on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) on 13th November in Sydney.

Drop by and get some cool info on what can be done with WCF.

More details here

Office DevCon is only 2 weeks away!

2007-10-21T19:53:00.001-07:00

Check out http://www.block.net.au/devcon/index.htm for more details.

I will be presenting two sessions on Saturday in Theatre 1.

Groove, your enterprise and SharePoint
WSS/MOSS Developer, tools tips and tricks

I am on at 9am right through until 10:50am and hope to see you all there.

Andre Connell has updated his mega WCM links and resources page.

2007-10-20T00:45:00.001-07:00

It can be found here.

What happens to my Groove workspaces when my machine dies?

2007-10-15T23:10:00.001-07:00

Question.

How does a workspace created on my machine get stored?

For example. If I have a workspace created on my machine and others are using it and contributing to it and my machine dies. What happens to that workspace?

Answer (Thanks Paul Cannon from MSFT)

An exact copy of the space is maintained on all member’s machines. Therefore the loss of a member (in fact, the loss of all but one member) is not an issue and can be recovered from. The surviving member simply "reinvites" everyone.

The analogy I would use is think of the Borg collective (Insert Shameless Star Trek Next Gen reference here). The collective still continues as long as there is at least one drone connected to the hive.

WCF File Streaming - Code V1 now up on CodePlex

2007-10-15T18:26:00.001-07:00

The code for my WCF Podcast has been posted up to CodePlex and can be found here.

I will be continually improving the code over time but for now it is pretty solid.

Enjoy!

Trip photos now online

2007-10-14T20:25:00.001-07:00

On my recent trip to Europe I took over 2000 photos. Which is easily done considering where I went.

Anyway the photos are here

enjoy!

What is Groove?

2007-10-07T23:51:00.001-07:00

A question I get asked more and more frequently is "What is this Groove thing and how can I use it?".

Here's the official Microsoft description:

Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007 is a collaboration software program that teams can use to work together dynamically in collaborative workspaces from virtually any location.

Doesn't really explain much really, does it??

Here is what Groove really is (Minus the marketing speak):

It is an easy to use, peer to peer desktop collaboration client (not web) application targeted towards small/medium groups that facilitates the secure (192 bit encryption) sharing of information.

It allows the creating of customizable workspaces that facilitates the sharing of documents that are automatically synchronized with all the members of a given workspace.

Any changes made while offline will automatically be synchronized when next online.

Groove is all about bringing teams together seamlessly regardless of geographic location, bandwidth restrictions and allowing a fully collaborative experience for all its users.

In summary here are the key features (from the product guide):

Document collaboration tools - make the process of sharing and revising team files easy and efficient, and help you publish completed files to Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services document libraries for workflow or storage.
Threaded discussions - enable everybody on your team to track and contribute to a shared, ongoing conversation on important topics.
Meeting tool and Calendar tool - help keep everybody on your team apprised of important project milestones, meetings, and updates.
Custom forms - make it possible to collect structured information from your team using the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering program or Office Groove 2007 Forms.
Presence awareness - helps you figure out who is working on what, when, so you can engage team members at the right time.
Alerts - let you know when files and information change in your workspaces and when team members perform important activities.
Workspace Chat - enables you to hold impromptu, spontaneous exchanges of information with team members—wherever they are.
Integration with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 and 2005 - enables you to initiate phone calls and instant messaging sessions with your team members right from Office Groove 2007.

What is a workspace?

A workspace is a virtual place where teams collaboratively share, modify, and discuss files; chat; hold threaded discussions; manage recurring project meetings; track tasks, opportunities, and issues; and more.

In an upcoming post I will go through the process of creating a collaboration workspace and how to use and invite users. Then in another post I will discuss how Groove can be used by developers.

BizTalk 2006 R2 now on MSDN

2007-10-06T02:27:00.001-07:00

Caught this from Bill Chesnut's blog:

http://biztalkbill.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/34/Default.aspx

Office DevCon 2007 - now has a website

2007-10-06T02:21:00.001-07:00

Check out: http://www.block.net.au/devcon/index.htm

I will be presenting the following:

Groove, your enterprise and SharePoint
This session introduces Groove and provides an overview on how it
can be used within your organisation. This talk is squarely aimed
at the Information Worker/IT pro and also illustrates how it can be
integrated with SharePoint and how teams within your organisation
can use this great technology and really enhance team productivity.

WSS/MOSS Developer tools, tips and tricks
This topic is aimed solely at the SharePoint developer. In this talk
i go through what tools you will need to enable you to start developing
on SharePoint today and how to get started. I also cover off some neat
tips and tricks and where to find the information that you need.

Remember Office DevCon will be held over the weekend of 3rd-4th November 2007.

Back online..

2007-10-06T02:17:00.001-07:00

I am back online after my 4 week holiday to Europe and i am in the process of going through the 2,600 photos that i took. I will put these up onto Flickr real soon.

I went to the following countries/places:

Germany - Berlin
Moscow - Main capital
Russia - Suzdal & Vladimir (Golden Ring tour)
Moscow - Main capital - to join next tour
Russia - St. Petersburg
Russia - Novrogod
Estonia - Tallinn
Latvia - Riga
Lithuania - Vilnius
Poland - Warsaw
Poland - Krakow
Czech Republic - Prague
Austria - Vienna

I learnt heaps while over there and a big shout out to Henry Klepacki from Kompas travel.

Henryk was our excellent tour guide and his knowledge of European history was unparalleled and I learnt many (new) things and I was inspired to buy many books that he recommended, now all i have to do is read them :-)

Thanks Henryk and of course Janouz our top bus driver.

Going offline for a while...

2007-09-06T02:15:00.001-07:00

I am going overseas on a well deserved break and wont be blogging until i get back in early october.

Looking forward to doing some great blog posts when i get back.

Cheers...

Office DevCon in Sydney November 3-4 2007

2007-09-04T17:03:00.001-07:00

The Office DevCon will be held at the Microsoft offices in Sydney in November 3-4th. This event is kind of like CodeCamp but for all things Microsoft office related.

I will be presenting 3 sessions(yet to be confirmed) on the following:

Groove, Sharepoint and your Enterprise
Excel Services - Applications and Extensions (Same presentation i gave at the SharePoint APAC conference in May)
SharePoint/WSS - Developer Tips, Tricks and tools

For more details check out the link on Andrew Coates's blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/acoat/archive/2007/08/21/office-devcon-in-sydney-november-3-4-will-you-be-there.aspx

Look forward to seeing you there.

WCF File Streaming Podcast

2007-08-30T19:21:00.001-07:00

Here is a Podcast that i did recently for a WCF implementation of file streaming and persistence using SQL CE, WCF.

Enjoy.

http://aspnetpodcast.com/CS11/blogs/asp.net_podcast/archive/2007/08/28/asp-net-podcast-show-100-aaron-on-wcf-file-streaming.aspx

Which edition of SharePoint is right for you?

2007-08-30T17:11:00.001-07:00

Toni has a great article the describes the CALS of SharePoint so you can easily make an informed choice on which version to use.

It also covers licence costs and covers what you get for your $$$.

The link is here:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/usecases/archive/2007/08/30/which-sharepoint-edition-is-right-for-you.aspx

The WSS challenge is on...

2007-08-29T18:06:00.001-07:00

Hot on the heels of Philip Beadle's WebJam (http://www.philipbeadle.net/home.aspx?EntryID=81)

I will be working on getting Windows SharePoint Services installed in under 2 minutes 21 seconds or thereabouts.

Philip is a DotNetNuke (DNN) Core Team member and he has thrown down the gauntlet as far as DNN Vs. WSS goes and I think I will take him up on the challenge.

So watch this space for more details...

NOD32 AntiVirus configuration and Groove 2007

2007-08-29T17:06:00.001-07:00

If you get the error message “Cannot connect to provisioning server” from Groove 2007 and you are running NOD32 Antivirus then you will need to make the following configuration changes to your NOD32 console for Groove to connect to the provisioning server.

(This article assumes that you have an account setup in Groove)

The steps are as follows:

Logout out of Groove and shut down..this is important!!

Go to the NOD32 console

Click on the IMON module

Click on Setup, then the IMON setup screen will appear

Click on the Miscellaneous tab. Then in the exclusion section, click on Edit

On the exclusion form, click Add...Locate the Groove.exe under the Office12 directory. This is usually under \Program Files\Microsoft Office\...

Click OK..Click OK Again

Minimise NOD32.

Launch Groove 2007 and you should be able to now connect to the provisioning server.

www.ozmoss.com now WSS 3.0 site

2007-08-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.ozmoss.com/ is now a WSS 3.0 site!
i will be adding how to articles, podcasts, web casts etc over the next few months.
looking for guest contributors.

At TechEd

2007-08-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

I will be at TechEd this week and will have limited access to email and of course I wont be blogging much.
I will be back on deck next week.
cheers,
Aaron

Announcing the Readify Developer Network

2007-08-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Readify Developer Network is the easiest way for you to get a head start in new and upcoming Microsoft technologies, including BizTalk R2, Orcas and Powershell. The sessions are presented by Readify's highly qualified and respected Senior Consultants and Developers and are developed through a combination of early access to Microsoft technology and real world experience using the tools and environments.
Best of all its FREE!!

More detail is available here:
http://www.readify.net/rdn.aspx

Ace is a doggie rescue calendar winner!!

2007-08-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

Our little dog Ace has been nominated as a DoggieRescue (http://www.doggierescue.com.au/) calendar winner for 2008!
We are very excited!

Here is a photo of the little guy:

Update:
The wife wanted to say the following:
Doggie Rescue is a Sydney-based animal shelter which rescues lost, abandoned and neglected dogs from death row at council pounds in the Sydney metropolitan area. It receives no government funding and relies solely on the generosity of its sponsors and supporters for funding.
Doggie Rescue’s annual calender drive is a key plank in its yearly fundraising initiatives.
Thanks to the kindness of several key sponsors in providing printing and production expertise, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of calenders each year goes to support DoggieRescue’s work.
I’d encourage all readers of Aaron’s blog to purchase a calender (they are available in October) to support such a wonderful cause.

Ace’s story. Ace was mistreated and his medical needs neglected over a long period of time by his previous family. He was later abandoned.
He ended up at the pound and would have been put to sleep without the fantastic work of DoggieRescue, whose volunteers rescued him on his last day of life.
We will always be grateful for them taking care of him until we could adopt him. He has been with us for three years now and after a lot of vet treatment, training and rehabilitation he is now doing really well.
Ace will be 9 on 1 September.

RIP - Mega Keg O''Software 2

2007-08-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my 250gb backup drive died and with it a lot of music etc.
i took it to DataDetect (http://www.datadetect.com.au/) and they dismantled the drive and basically said its fried.
Also it would cost $3000 to get 50% of data off it.
I guess its my own fault and to backup to DVD more regularly.
RIP MKOS2

TFS Now is now online!

2007-07-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

Need a reliable, cost effective system to manage your project from end to end?

Look no further than Team Foundation Server and TFS Now, the world’s first online hosted TFS offering.

Check out:

http://www.tfsnow.com/

All the best Frank!

2007-07-15T19:59:00.001-07:00

Just an open posting to wish Frank Arrigo all the best in Redmond and remember to keep them all honest!
All the best!!

Recursively search folders for files with multiple file extensions in C#

2007-07-15T19:26:00.001-07:00

been busy...

2007-07-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

ive been really busy with work and getting up to speed on gaps in my knowledge in .Net 3.0.
I am working on a complex smartclient application at the moment that pretty much uses most of the Microsoft technology stack.
We are using WPF, WCF, WF, CRM 3, EntLib 3.1, SQL 2005, SQL Compact edition just to name a few.
I am handling the WCF bit as this is my background and i have implemented a neat file transfer WCF service with safe resume. I will be blogging about this in the next week and will also put up a camtasia to go with it.

Going for MCA!

2007-06-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

I have been put forward to go before the Jedi council..sorry MCA review board to go through my competencies to attain my Microsoft Certified Architect credential!
More details here:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/architect/specialties/default.mspx

I need to do the following:

Prepare a current resume or CV
Prepare a project abstract
Prepare a competency summary document

This is very tough and has a 70% failure rate, so I am under no illusions about the toughness and rigourous process i need to go through.
I also managed to get a free spot so the $10,000USD fee doesnt apply ;-)
So in the coming weeks I will keep youupdated.

Apologies for not blogging..

2007-06-16T02:09:00.000-07:00

Been very busy with project work and havent had the chance to write any good or useful articles. but they will be coming soon.
Cheers