Lets start with the quick definition of it----- SharePoint is a software platform used for hosting customizable websites where multiple users can share documents and work on projects. A SharePoint home page for your product will be accessible through a Web browser with no need for special software. It integrates well with Microsoft Office products.

The key to SharePoint is something called “Web parts,” small software applets or controls that provide a set of functions, like a task list or a discussion board. In SharePoint, you can select the Web parts you want for your customized webpage. Users can modify the appearance and behavior of a webpage directly from their browser. The Web parts then act as controls that interact with other programs and pull information from a variety of sources, including law office programs, databases and websites, all without the user needing to know anything about the underlying programming.

The result is a personalized portal page where you and everyone else given access can find, see and manage all of the relevant information for your project in a familiar, easy-to-learn Web format.

Click on a link and you open a document or read an e-mail without moving from program to program. And with a few quick clicks you can move your list of documents around the page or change fonts and colors without affecting anyone else’s experience.

The list of standard tools in Share­Point is impressive:

• Document management, including the ability to search a single page or the entire site quickly.

• Version control, including ways to limit access to a document and to restore previous versions.

• Wikis, where everyone with access can add and correct information.

• Blogs, allowing posting of information so that others may comment.

• RSS feeds, to gather information from throughout the Internet.

• Workflow and project management tools.

I’ve seen SharePoint used to identify experts, handle knowl­edge management projects, and connect the right people for certain tasks.

And SharePoint could well be another Microsoft “Point” that you will want to get.

En este sentido es muy importante prever desde el principio:

• la participación de profesionales de diseño gráfico(diseñadores, creativos),
• tener claro el alcance en tiempo y dinero del trabajo creativo y de adaptación(
• ofrecer al cliente propuestas/maquetas del diseño, la propuesta de diseño no debe limitarse a la primera pagina, se debe pensar en un diseño gráfico consistente(por ejemplo: todos los elementos de navegación deben tener la misma apariencia)
• conocer las posibilidades de SharePoint en cuanto a la personalizarían de Look&Feel, en este sentido muchas veces he escuchado que la tecnología SharePoint no ofrece mucha flexibilidad para aplicarle diseño, creo que no es del todo cierto.

En referencia al último punto adjunto un enlace al ppt "Customizing The Look And Feel Of SharePoint Sites" que se presento en la European Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2007.
En esta se hace un repaso de opciones y herramientas que permiten adaptar un sitio SharePoint a un determinado diseño.

Otros enlace de referencia son algunos Post del blog de Héctor Insua(http://hinsua.blogspot.com/search/label/Branding)

Has any of you ever done this before?

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/files/folders/henkhooiveld/entry4858.aspx

It shows the dependancy of each permission. Without this one, you can't have that one. Letting you know just what will happen to all the permissions of a user if you remove one permission for that user.

Encontré un sitio que tiene una colección de posters de SharePoint que me parecen muy interesantes(como material didáctico):

http://www.drp.co.za/Media/Posters/PostersPDF/tabid/62/Default.aspx

Sharepoint2007 TheRequest Pipeline Ghosting And Unghosting

Sharepoint2007 Creating Web Applications

Sharepoint 2007 Architecture

http://agiledirect.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/developer-awareness-and-the-bad-reputation-of-sharepoint-designer-a-post-to-all-developers

It is my highest recommendation that if you are a SharePoint Developer, Analyst, or Consultant that you fully investigate SharePoint Designer and what is available out of the box for SharePoint. One of the biggest wastes around SharePoint is the duplication of effort. Someone doesn't know enough about the out of the box components and features (partly Microsoft's fault for not evangelising this) and recreates SharePoint functionality.

Don't think it's just SharePoint Designer either, make sure you understand the API of SharePoint well before developing something, because odds are it might already exist, or at least an existing object or class can give you a boost and reduce your development effort.

If you haven't take a gander at all the SharePoint WebControls: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.webcontrols.aspx

A few other examples of great components that exist out of the box that often people don't explore fully are:

• DataFormWebPart
• ListFormWebPart
• ListViewWebPart

I hope this helps,
Richard

There are a whole slew of ways to do this, but I will recommend the simplest and most successful approach (in my experience). That is the STSADM command for backing up site collections, and the STSADM command for restoring site collections.

Backup a Site Collection

1. On your SharePoint server hit WINDOWS + R.
2. Type "cmd" and click OK.
3. In the cmd window navigate to the "C:\Program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin" directory.
4. Type stsadm -o backup -url "http://theurlofthesitecollection" -filename "C:\MyFirstBackup.bak" -overwrite
5. Press Enter

   When the backup is completed it will now be sitting in your C:\ with the name MyFirstBackup.bak.

At this point you can copy the file to the other server, or just perform the restore on the same server by following the steps below.

Note before restoring ensure that the target site collection you are restoring onto is a BLANK site. This will allow you to avoid some potential issues with duplicate names and ID's.

To Restore a Site Collection

1. On your SharePoint server hit WINDOWS + R.
2. Type "cmd" and click OK.
3. In the cmd window navigate to the "C:\Program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin" directory.
4. Type stsadm -o restore -url "http://theurlofthetargetsitecollection" -filename "C:\MyFirstBackup.bak" -overwrite
5. Press Enter

When the restore is complete the site collection should now be replicated, or restored.

Keep in mind this is a pretty fast method. However it is not the ONLY or BEST meethod for backing up. It's only my recommendation for something fast to migrate site collections, etc.

For more inforamtion on the limitations of each backup method and advantages see this wonderful TechNet Article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287880(TechNet.10).aspx

Thank you,
Richard

Not sure what it is? Basically (very generalized description) it allows you to roll up SharePoint data into a customizable presentation. Read more here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA101741341033.aspx

What this really means is two things:

1. You can roll up pretty much any kind of "query" you can think of for SharePoint data. I could roll up all the policy documents throughout the entire site collection into one page for everyone to see, or maybe roll up the latest 5 news articles and present them to the viewer.
2. You can CUSTOMIZE the look and feel VERY easily. This can allow some normal list data that looks like a listing of information to be INTERACTIVE for a user, or to look and feel exactly how you want it to!

The second point there is extremely important for those who are using it for internet sites. Want your news articles to roll up on your homepage and show just a thumbnail, title and description? Easy as pie! What if those news articles are all over the site, and are made by many different kinds of users? As long as you structured the data (used content types or something) you can just "Query" it with the content query webpart and voila it will appear.

Now for the part many people miss: But it doesn't look the way I want it to, and all the options still don't make it look the way I want.

No problem! If you have anyone who can do basic HTML you should be able to pull it off. (XSL skills are probably a good thing for anything more advanced than minor changes.)

The Content Query WebPart runs off of XSL!
Microsoft released wonderful documentation on how to modify it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447557.aspx

But as always I will try and provide my own little example to help anyone who hasn't caught on yet.

1. Add a content query webpart to a page.
2. Here is what mine looked like:
   Take a look at the drop down for item style, what I am going to take you through is how to make your own new item style, completely customizing the LOOK and FEEL for how my data items are displayed.
3. Navigate to the site collection root and visit the StyleLibrary. Within this library is a folder called XSL Style Sheets. We are going to modify one of the files in here called ItemStyle.
4. You can modify it in notepad, or in visual studio or some other XML/XSL editor. For this demo I will be using visual studio.
5. Either write your own new template using the others as a guide OR copy one of them as a starting point. In this case we will just copy the "TitleOnly" template and paste it below.Notice that we change the NAME and MATCH of the template we copied. This is what it will show up in the drop down as, and how it will associate the styles and xsl you adjust in the actual content query webpart.
6. Add some HTML or adjust the XSL as desired. In this sample I just added an image that will appear to the left of each title.
   
7. Save and check the XSL change in.
   
8. Open the content query webpart you added in step 1 and cause the item style drop down to display.
   
   You will notice our new template shows up.
9. Click OK or Apply and VOILA - Customized Presentation (in my case an image of myself showing to the left of each item. Narcissistic I know.)
   

I hope you all see the power of this WebPart and use it to save you tons of time and effort,
Richard

You could go into the SharePoint logs, but almost everyone just turns on debugging, callstack and custom errors off.

Let's turn SharePoint debugging and error reporting on shall we?

1. To do this navigate to the Inetpub directory on your SharePoint server.
2. Navigate into the wwwroot folder.
3. Navigate into the wss folder.
4. Navigate into the web application's folder. (This is either a hostheader name, or a port number, if in doubt talk to whomever set up your SharePoint environment.)
5. Open the web.config file.
6. Find the following line: <customerrors mode="On" /> and change the "On" value to "Off".
7. Find the following line: <SafeMode MaxControls="50" CallStack="false" and change the "false" value of CallStack to "true".
8. Find the following line: <compilation batch=”false” debug=”false“> and change the "false" value of debug to "true".
9. Perform either an IISReset (hit windows + R and type IISRESET and click OK)
   OR
   Just recycle the app pool. (This way it doesn't impact the other web applications.)

When you reload the page, site, or reperform the error causing action you should now see more information on what caused the error and if you still aren't sure how to resolve it can always turn to mans best friend google and search for that error.

Good luck with your troubleshooting,
Richard

If you type "?contents=1" after any SharePoint page name in your browser window it will show you the webparts maintenance view for that page. This allows you to easily remove the offending webpart and continue on with whatever you were doing.

Example: "http://portal/sites/default.aspx?contents=1"

Hope this helps save some time,
Richard

The reason in this case was to compare market figures and sales trends by month, especially helpful if you are trying to see how much you improved or what demand might be expected to be for certain products or services.

The problem was, they wanted the ability to filter and sort a column of this data in line (in this case month), not just see views of the information.

The solution in this case was simple, just use a calculated column for the month view and you will get the in line sorting and filtering of SharePoint for that column.

1. Create a column called month.
2. Set the calculation in this case to be "=MONTH([DateColumn])".
   (Some examples of other common formulas: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA101054791033.aspx?pid=CH100650061033)

That's it.

Now his users could filter the records by month without having to change views.

This could also be easily used to create a column that calculated the season as an example to give them both the ability to maybe group quarterly results and total them. (Note: To total a calculated column see my total calculated columns post.)

Make your users experience more powerful and provide them the details they need in the way they are used to it, or would prefer to see it by applying a bit of thought to the application of calculated columns.

Enjoy,
Richard

The home page was taking several seconds to load and had been getting progressively worse over some time.  There had been no new updates or additions that anyone was aware of.  Like all good Windows Administrators I heard the whisper of reboot. 

After a short amount of digging I took a look at one of my favorite quick hits and there was part of the problem.  A significant number, Eighty-Nine, of WebParts had been closed and not deleted from the page.  There are a number of posts out there on this issue, but I am rarely surprised these days that this still occurs. 

To see whether your page suffers from too many closed web parts do the following.

1. Site Actions
2. Edit Page
3. Add a Web Part
4. Advanced Web Part Gallery and Options
5. Select "Closed Web Parts"
6. Drag and Drop Onto Page
7. Choose the Edit Menu for Web Part
8. Click Delete

You can also use the Manage Web Parts Maintenance Page

So here’s the deal…

You’ve got your account, ‘TestMOSSMySiteAdmin01’ – you go and create it in Active Directory, typically by just specifying the Full Name & User Logon Name, and your screen looks something like this:

Notice a couple of things here:

§  The user logon name is exactly what I want – the full account name.

§  But the ‘User Logon Name (per-Windows 2000) has been truncated by one character (character #21)

So now we hop over to our MOSS environment, as we want to bring up a new Web Application for our MySites, and use this account.  We run through the typical web app setup, and specify the full username:

But when we submit this information, we get a username/password combination error:

Event thought I’ve entered everything correctly. 

So after ripping my hair out, this is where the Active Directory account’s User logon name (pre-Windows 2000) comes into play.  From what I can tell, this is what MOSS is using when you input a username – so in this case, I have to truncate the name of my service account in the web application setup form:

Notice that I had to cut off the last number – to match what AD was showing.  Now, when I submit this, my web application gets created properly.  And to verify that it took the shortened name, I open up IIS, and voila – using the truncated account logon name:

And while I’m running Server 2008 with IIS7, I have confirmed this is the same on Server 2003 with IIS6. 

So in the end, the moral of the blog post is that whenever you can, keep your service account names to under 20 characters.  If you can't beware of this issue.

-Chris

Technorati Tags:
SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, MOSS, MOSS 2007, Security

Ever site (web) within a site collection has a property called Author which is set to the account that created the site (Wether it be via the SharePoint UI, or the OM).  To the best of my knowledge, this is not exposed in the UI.  So for example, if I'm logged in a "John Doe" to a site, and create a subsite, the Author property of the new subsite will be set to "John Doe".

The problem, is that if "John Doe" is ever removed from the site collection, accessing this property will result in a User not found exception such as the following:

Unhandled Exception: Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUserCollection.GetByID(Int32 id)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb.get_Author()

This doesn't present itself as a problem by just using the SharePoint UI, but if you have custom code that inspects this property, be sure to add some additional exception handling.The problem, is that if "John Doe" is ever removed from the site collection, accessing this property will result in an exception.

To see an example of this problem, do the following:

1. Create a new site collection
2. Add a test account with Full Control to the root site (Web) of this site collection
3. Login to that site as the test account, and create a subsite (Subweb in OM talk)
4. Run the following sample code that dumps out the fields of the Author property
5. As a site collection admin, or another account with rights to manage permissions, remove the test account from the site collection via  "People and Groups: All People"
6. Run the following sample code again, and you'll see it throw the exception when you try to access any of the fields of the property.

Sample Code

using System;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

namespace WhereforeArtThou
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Open the site collection
            Console.WriteLine("Opening site");
            SPSite site = new SPSite(args[0]);

            Console.WriteLine("Access properties from the web");
            // Open the web via the URL passed in
            SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
            Console.WriteLine("web title: " + web.Title);
            Console.WriteLine("Author ID: " + web.Author.ID.ToString());
            Console.WriteLine("Author Name: " + web.Author.Name);
        }
    }
}

Is it a bug?  No, not really IMHO, just something to watch out for.  Besides, if the user is removed from the site collection, who is the author supposed to be replaced with?  Regardless of who it was replaced with, the property will no longer hold a valid value of the original author of the site.

Hope this helps!

- Keith

This is caused by your web.config referencing assembly that doesn't exists any more. The most likely cause is that you added HelloWorldWebPart as a safecontrol as part of a tutorial and then delete it later, but didn't remove the reference.

The web.config is located at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<port number>. In most cases, the port will probably be 80. If you examine the web.config file, you may find the following reference:

Delete this reference and the problem will go away.

- Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
- Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)
- Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)

This update relates to the following products:

- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
- Microsoft Office Project Server 2007
- Microsoft Search Server 2008
- Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express  

Summary:

This update is the biggest, in my opinion, and not only resolves issues, but also includes 2 new Enterprise Search components, namely Federated Search and a unified administration dashboard.  These components shipped with Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express and will now be available in SharePoint 2007!  Over and above the additional components a large amount of issues have also been resolved.   This update is so significant that I'm still left wondering why this isn't a service pack. 

In any event, here is a quick summary of the added components followed by my list of fixes I'm happy to see:

Federated Search:

I must admit, although I'm excited about Federated Search, I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about.  Federated Search gives SharePoint administrators the ability to create connections from their intranet to external sites for indexing purposes.  This is not a new concept as this ability was, and still is, available natively from within SharePoint 2007.  Administrator can very easily add multiple content sources to their search, including file shares, exchange folder, third party data (via BDC) and internet sites to "federate" their results.  

Having said that, I'm happy that Microsoft have gone this route as it gives the less tech savvy administrator the ability to add value in their organisation easier (hopefully) as the setup and configuration should be less cumbersome.

Here is a screenshot of the updated results:

Unified Administration Dashboard:

The updated dashboard consolidates all the search related functions into one page.  This is going to make the life of the SharePoint Administrator a lot easier.  Although Microsoft have tried their best to layout the navigation and menu structure of the Central and Shared Service Provider Administration to be as self explanatory as possible, I still find myself getting a little lost in it from time to time.

Here is a screenshot of the updated dashboard:

 Here is a list of the fixes I'm very happy have been included:

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)

This update relates to:

- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Summary:

This update centres mainly around Workflow and Content Deployment, but here are the updates that I'm happy to see:

- Miscellaneous deadlocks occur in Microsoft SQL Server
- Custom master page settings on the source site are not propagated to the destination site during deployment. (I was hoping that they would solve the masterpage propogation to child sites, guess we will need to wait)

For a full description of what is resolved with this update, please read this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953749/

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)

This update relates to:

- Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007

Summary:

A lot of work has been done on the "Cost resources" side of things, which is great news as apart from tracking progress, tracking cost is exceptionally important.  Here are the updates that I'm happy to see:

- When you enter actual cost for a task, the task's finish date changes. Additionally, the new date differs from the assignment's finish date
- Random costs are added to the planned cost contour when you enter actual costs at the end of the established contour
- Addressed top issues that relate to active cache data resiliency (Looking forward to seeing how this update works in practise)
- Added a dialog box that notifies users to make sure that you save all pending project data to the Project Server Queue before they exit Project Professional
- When you receive an error message in Project 2007, you may receive a check-in request message

For a full description of what is resolved with this update, please read this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953751/

Resources:

- http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch/archive/2008/07/15/announcing-availability-of-infrastructure-updates.aspx
- http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=101
- http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/07/15/announcing-availability-of-infrastructure-updates.aspx

Now with the advent of "Wordpress App" in IPhone,I can't wait anymore to start blogging in my "all new" SharePoint blog.

Will be writing / blogging everyday about SharePoint and all the interesting things that I do / did.

Thanks for the IPhone App - Wordpress :-)

Chander

Solutionizing PoShASP

Of course you could just follow the provided installation instructions by hand, but what if we wanted to use a WSP?

Step 1: Install PowerShell 1.0

PowerShell is included on Windows Server 2008; for other flavors of Windows, download here.

Step 2: Web.Config Changes

PoShASP requires adding an HttpHandler to web.config. The preferred way to do this is through a WebApplication-scoped feature receiver. The code would look something like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

namespace Solutionizing.PowerShellASP {
  class WebApplicationFeatureReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver {
    private const string MODS_OWNER = "PowerShellASP";
    private const string PS_VERB = "*";
    private const string PS_PATH = "*.ps1x";
    private const string PS_TYPE = "PowerShellToys.PowerShellASP.PSHandler, PowerShellToys.PowerShellASP";
    private const string MOD_PATH  = "configuration/system.web/httpHandlers";
    private const string MOD_NAME  = @"add[@path=""{0}""]";
    private const string MOD_VALUE = @"<add verb=""{0}"" path=""{1}"" type=""{2}""/>";

    private SPWebConfigModification AddHttpHandler(string verb, string path, string type) {
      SPWebConfigModification mod = new SPWebConfigModification(string.Format(MOD_NAME, path), MOD_PATH);
      mod.Value = String.Format(MOD_VALUE, verb, path, type);
      mod.Owner = MODS_OWNER;
      mod.Sequence = 0;
      mod.Type = SPWebConfigModification.SPWebConfigModificationType.EnsureChildNode;
      return mod;
    }

    public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
      SPWebApplication webApp = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWebApplication;
      webApp.WebConfigModifications.Add(AddHttpHandler(PS_VERB, PS_PATH, PS_TYPE));
      webApp.Farm.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>().ApplyWebConfigModifications();
    }

    public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) {
      SPWebApplication webApp = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWebApplication;
      Collection<SPWebConfigModification> mods = webApp.WebConfigModifications;

      int startCount = mods.Count;
      for (int c = startCount - 1; c >= 0; c--) {
        SPWebConfigModification mod = mods[c];
        if (mod.Owner == MODS_OWNER)
          mods.Remove(mod);
      }

      if (startCount > mods.Count) {
        webApp.Update();
        webApp.Farm.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>().ApplyWebConfigModifications();
      }
    }

    public override void FeatureInstalled(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { }
    public override void FeatureUninstalling(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { }
  }
}

And we need a feature for the receiver. (Download image here.)

<Feature Id="316F5804-C11B-4E4B-9CD3-E6BD6801091A"
         Title="PowerShellASP"
         Description="Installs PowerShellASP - http://www.powershelltoys.com/"
         Scope="WebApplication"
         Version="1.0.0.0"
         ImageUrl="PowerShellASP/PoSh_60x45.jpg"
         ImageUrlAltText="PowerShell"
         ReceiverAssembly="Solutionizing.PowerShellASP, ..."
         ReceiverClass="Solutionizing.PowerShellASP.WebApplicationFeatureReceiver"
         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" />

Step 3: Test Script

Before we finish the package, let's add a sample script in LAYOUTS - test.ps1x:

<html>
<body>
<% $s = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($Request.Url) %>
<% $raw = $Request.RawUrl %>
<% $w = $s.OpenWeb($raw.Substring(0, $raw.IndexOf($Request.Path))) %>
<h1>Hidden Lists in <a href="<%=$w.Url %>"><%=$w.Title %></a></h1>
<table width="100%">
<tr><th>List Title</th><th>Items<tr></th></tr>
<% $w.Lists | ?{$_.Hidden -eq $true} |
   sort @{expression="ItemCount";Ascending=$true},@{expression="Title";Descending=$true} | %{ %>
<tr>
  <td><a href="<%= $w.Url %><%= $_.DefaultViewUrl %>"><%= $_.Title %></a></td>
  <td><%= $_.ItemCount %></td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><p style="overflow: auto; height: 8em">
<%= [Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SPEncode]::HtmlEncode($_.PropertiesXml) %>
</p></td></tr>
<% } %>
</table>
<pre>
<% $w %>
<% $s %>
<% $Request %>
</pre>
</body>
</html>

This contrived example fetches the current SPSite and SPWeb and then outputs a table of the hidden lists in the current site with a few properties. It also dumps the default PowerShell view of the current SPWeb, SPSite and HttpRequest objects. It's not exactly pretty, but it sufficiently demonstrates a few key concepts of PoShASP.

Step 4: Deploy DLL

The final piece is the assembly, which needs to go in the web application's bin directory. Our solution brings everything together:

<Solution SolutionId="5C594B30-9AE5-4910-8DA2-1D7BA622FACC"
          ResetWebServer="True"
          xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <FeatureManifests>
    <FeatureManifest Location="PowerShellASP\feature.xml" />
  </FeatureManifests>
  <TemplateFiles>
    <TemplateFile Location="IMAGES\PowerShellASP\PoSh_60x45.jpg" />
    <TemplateFile Location="LAYOUTS\PowerShellASP\test.ps1x" />
  </TemplateFiles>
  <Assemblies>
    <Assembly Location="Solutionizing.PowerShellASP.dll"
              DeploymentTarget="GlobalAssemblyCache" />
    <Assembly Location="PowerShellToys.PowerShellASP.dll"
              DeploymentTarget="WebApplication" />

  </Assemblies>
</Solution>

Step 5: Deploy

Now that our solution is complete, we can install and deploy the WSP. Note that the package contains a resource—the PoShASP DLL—scoped for a web application, so deploy accordingly. Once the solution is deployed, the feature needs to be activated through Central Admin or stsadm (or PowerShell ;). If all goes according to plan, the application's bin directory will contain PowerShellToys.PowerShellASP.dll and web.config will have an HttpHandler for .ps1x files. Now open your browser to http://yourapp/_layouts/PowerShellASP/test.ps1x and see what we have. You can also try http://yourapp/SubSite/_layouts/PowerShellASP/test.ps1x to see the change in site context. (Screenshot was taken before I rolled test.ps1x into my test solution.)

From Content Database

Earlier I mentioned that the handler doesn't work for scripts stored in the content database. The easiest way to test this is to upload a .ps1x file to a document library. Attempting to open the file yields a lovely exception. So where is this exceptional path coming from? Well the stack trace gives us a good place to start:

   System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(String path) +112
   PowerShellToys.PowerShellASP.PSHandler.a(String A_0) +75

Cue Reflector. In PSHandler.a(String A_0) we find the following:

    using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(A_0)) {
      ...

And A_0 comes from the implementation of IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext):

    string filename = A_0.Request.MapPath(A_0.Request.FilePath);
    ...
    this.a(filename);

Since Docs/Documents/Get-Process.ps1x doesn't map to anything special like _layouts, IIS just maps it to the local root of the site. We know this won't work, but how can we let the handler in on our little secret? In my next post I'll go over some code that could get us to that point.

With or without the content database limitation, how would you use PowerShellASP with SharePoint?

...obwohl wir an dem System in den relvanten Teilen nichts geändert haben, haben heute morgen einige der Nintex Workflow nicht mehr funktioniert. Nach dem ich mir die Workflows im Detail angeschaut habe und alle Einzelheiten geprüft habe, aber keinen Fehler gefunden habe, habe ich sie einfach noch ein mal neu publiziert. Und siehe da, es funktioniert...

Das scheint eine dieser SharePoint Besonderheiten zu sein...

Everyone is interested in SharePoint, all around the world, and the ways in which it is being deployed have gone far beyond the initial designs and estimates from the SharePoint product teams.

What this means is that with any kind of explosive growth (and it's not going to slow down) the demand for people who are knowledgeable with SharePoint from all the different areas (Sales, Consulting, Development (especially development), Administration etc) has increased just as fast.

The best part? It's super easy to learn. I mean it. You hear alot about a good SharePoint developer, or a good SharePoint consultant making tons of money, or finding lots of success but the truth is you are either a good developer or not, a good consultant or not. My recommendation is: "If you haven't looked into SharePoint and what it can do, the growth and reception it is recieving around the world from all areas of business, and how the actual framework (and associated frameworks) work then you should do so immediatly."

SharePoint has a massive community for sharing and collaborating. There's the SharePoint solutions on http://www.codeplex.com which can save money and time for many organizations. Microsoft recently released a specialized website for SharePoint development: http://www.microsoft.com/click/sharepointdeveloper/ and of course you still have MSDN, Newsgroups and Technet.

A good developer can get his/her WSS certification in I would say a week or two of looking at the API and creating some simple sample components. The MOSS certification and technical/configuration certifications are a little more specialized but also very easy. If you are an IT administrator, Systems Analyst or just someone in the IT field and you want another certification I highly recommend getting 1 of the 4 SharePoint ones. Because this growth isn't going to slow down, the demand will continue to increase, and it's easier to distinguish yourself now, then it will be when a couple years down the road the entire market is saturated with SharePoint specialists.

This also goes for Sales staff, I remember hearing time and time again SharePoint sales staff saying: "The beauty of SharePoint is it sells itself!". With all the marketing and sales tools that Microsoft pumps out it makes it very easy to stay up to date and evangelise Microsoft's suite of products. The Microsoft Gear UP group will give you tons of free resources and tools for sales stuff: http://www.ms-gearup.com/

The number of SharePoint specialized companies, SharePoint supporting companies and sheer growth of Microsoft Partners means that if you take a bit of time now learning SharePoint or at least investigating it, you will gain immeasurable rewards and personal growth in the next few years.

Just a thought,
Richard