Back in MOSS 2007, we had to scratch . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How to Enable Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010]]> ASP.NET provides Call Stack and Tracing as wonderful features which helps developers on investigating what is going on page rendering behind the scene. SharePoint being a product which provides bunch of features OOTB which we can use to setup a portal very easily, it hides most of these information.

Back in MOSS 2007, we had to scratch our head thinking where to start our investigation when we get an error in the browser, because that error was not descriptive enough for us to start the investigation.

In SharePoint 2010, we have a nice feature – Developer Dashboard which helps developers to be comfortable when they see an error in the browser.

Enabling Developer Dashboard

Developer Dashboard is a feature targeted for developers (administrators as well) and hence it is disabled by default. We need to enable it using one of the method mentioned below:

• STSADM
• PowerShell
• SharePoint Object Model

STSADM

We still can use STSADM with SharePoint 2010 for administering SharePoint. However, STSADM is more likely to disappear in the next release. Though we can use following STSADM command to enable Developer Dashboard, I strongly recommend to get familiar with PowerShell, if you are not already.

1. Go to the command prompt and make sure to either set the path to the location of STSADM.EXE or navigate to the bin directory in SharePoint root in your command prompt.
2. Issue the following command in the command prompt:STSADM -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv ondemand

The above command will enable the Developer Dashboard in On Demand mode.

PowerShell

1. Go to Start –> All Programs –> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products –> SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
2. Issue the following command in the management shell:$devdash = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings;
   $devdash.DisplayLevel = ‘OnDemand’;
   $devdash.TraceEnabled = $true;
   $devdash.Update()

The above command will enable the Developer Dashboard in On Demand mode.

SharePoint Object Model

1. Create a Console Application, Windows Application or Web Site and add a reference to the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly.
2. Add using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace reference at the top of the code (C#) file.
3. Add the following code into your code (C#) file to enable Developer Dashboard:SPWebService svc = SPContext.Current.Site.WebApplication.WebService;
   svc.DeveloperDashboardSettings.DisplayLevel = SPDeveloperDashboardLevel.OnDemand;
   svc.DeveloperDashboardSettings.Update();

The above command will enable the Developer Dashboard in On Demand mode.

I have used On Demand as the setting for Display Level of the Developer Dashboard and following are the other options we can specify:

1. On – Enable the Developer Dashboard all the times
2. Off – Disable the Developer Dashboard
3. OnDemand – Enable the Developer Dashboard but will be displayed on demand.

When you enable Developer Dashboard in On Demand mode, following icon will be displayed next to your login name.

On click of the Developer Dashboard icon, page will be reloaded and Developer Dashboard will be displayed at the bottom of the page as shown below:

If you have also used TraceEnabled = $true switch with PowerShell, then you will see a link says “Show or hide additional tracing information …” at the end of the Developer Dashboard which allows you to show/ hide ASP.NET Tracing information as shown below:

Isn’t this a awesome feature for you to get started your investigation exercise? Have a closer look at what Developer Dashboard offers you and it will help you in numbers of ways.

One question that comes up frequently is “what about mobile devices?” Organizations want to . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Mobile Access for SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites]]> Over the past several years more and more organizations are choosing to deploy public facing Internet sites using SharePoint 2010. Building on existing skills and experiences, designers and .NET developers can create amazing looking web sites, some of which can be seen here.

One question that comes up frequently is “what about mobile devices?” Organizations want to ensure that the sites they build can be viewed not only by desktop and laptop users but also on mobile devices such as phones and tablets. The answer to this question cannot be summed up in a single sentence or paragraph.

Out of the box SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to render mobile views of the default SharePoint templates. These mobile views are usually acceptable for an intranet or extranet deployment but they are not well suited for a public facing site. A blog post titled Configure SharePoint Server 2010 for Mobile Device Access written by the Microsoft Office product development group demonstrates the out of the box mobile rendering capabilities.

Just like any other project, the key to a successful implementation is planning. When building public facing SharePoint 2010 web sites you have complete flexibility in determining what HTML, style sheets and ECMAScript is used for rendering the site. A designer and developer can use basic web standards or they can utilize the latest HTML 5 constructs. Building a public facing web site with SharePoint that can be easily viewed on mobile devices requires a good understanding of mobile device capabilities, who your audience is, and what devices you wish to support.

Mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone 7 have full feature-rich browsers that can render almost any content presented on the Internet today with the exception of plugins like Flash and Silverlight. There are also devices that have less featured browsers that would require a traditional mobile site in order for the user to have a positive experience.

Start your planning by evaluating why a user would be visiting your site with a mobile device and what content they would most likely be looking for. It is highly unlikely that every piece of content on a public facing site is important to mobile users. Chances are a mobile user will be looking for a specific piece of information such as directions, hours of operation, recent news, or weather conditions. The thought here is that a mobile user is just that… mobile. They are away from their home or office and they need to quickly view some information or accomplish a simple task using their mobile device. Mobile users are probably unlikely to be commenting on blogs,writing posts in a message forum,or trying to pay property taxes.

Once you have a good understanding or idea of why a mobile user would visit your site the next question should be who is visiting. Are you expecting adult visitors, teens, or children? Are they business professionals, home makers, or students? These questions will also help you determine the type of content and tasks you need to provide on your mobile site. If your site is primarily focused on teens having a mobile view of a message form or chat room may be necessary.

Now that you have determined who will be visiting your mobile site and what content they will be expecting, you now need to consider the likelihood of a specific mobile device viewing your site. Do you really need a specialized mobile only view or will the devices your visitors use have a full featured web browser? Do you expect visitors with older WAP only phones to be accessing the site or will the majority of your users be using a new Windows Phone 7?

While most focus on just the capabilities of the browser this may not be the most important factor. One must also consider the size of the screen. For example the iPhone and iPad have a very similar browser from a capabilities perspective but the experience of the user will be very different due to the screen size.

Example Planning Questions:

• Who is the audience?
• What information will they need or expect?
• How should the information be presented to this audience?
• What types of devices are likely to be used by the visitors?
  • Capabilities
  • Size
  • Touch screen or button navigation
• How will visitors navigate the site?

Once the planning process is complete and you have a good understanding of your audience, the information expected, how it should be presented and the devices you need to support, you can begin to design your solution. One possible option is that you are going to do nothing and your mobile visitors will just use the full version of your SharePoint 2010 internet web site. Another option is to create some form of a mobile only version of your site which caters to your expected visitors.

If you choose to create a mobile view of your SharePoint 2010 internet site you will next need to select one or more methods for building the site, and determine how a user will navigate it. As mentioned earlier SharePoint 2010 provides basic mobile views for lists and libraries, however, in most cases this would probably not be acceptable for a public facing site. Other options for building mobile sites include:

• Customizing the out of the box mobile home pages
• Creating mobile adapters for out of the box web parts
• Create custom field rendering controls for mobile pages
• Use SharePoint variations along with custom master pages and CSS for mobile devices
• Custom ASP.NET application that pulls content from SharePoint 2010
• Use a 3^rd party solution to assist in the creation of SharePoint 2010 mobile sites

The mobile options listed above are not mutually exclusive. In many cases you will choose multiple approaches from the list to build out a complete SharePoint 2010 mobile site. Below we will briefly take a look at each of these options.

Customizing the out of the box mobile home pages
SharePoint 2010 has a mobile page rendering system that utilizes templates to determine how the header, contents and footer are displayed. By creating your own rendering templates you can change the default out of the box mobile home pages to meet your needs. For detailed information on how to customize the mobile home pages refer to the following MSDN article.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802539.aspx

Creating mobile adapters for out of the box web parts
Many of the default SharePoint web parts have a basic mobile view that is displayed when a device accesses a mobile page. If you have your own custom web parts you will need to create a mobile adapter in order for them to properly display on a mobile page. For detailed information on how to create a mobile adapter refer to the following MSDN article.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539079.aspx

Create custom field rendering controls for mobile pages
SharePoint 2010 allows developers to build custom field rendering controls for mobile pages. These custom field rendering controls gives the developer full control over how fields are displayed in the display, edit, and new forms of a list. For detailed information on how to create a custom field rendering control for mobile pages refer to the following MSDN article.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862011.aspx

Use SharePoint variations along with custom master pages and CSS for mobile devices
A feature called Variations that was originally designed to enable multilingual sites could be used for managing a separate view for mobile devices. The Microsoft ECM Blog states “Variations is a SharePoint feature that facilitates the management and maintenance of content that can be served to multiple audiences. These audiences can vary in terms of different languages, countries, or regions, but they can also represent different brands or devices.” Using variations along with a custom mobile master page and CSS style could provide a mobile version of a public facing SharePoint site.

Custom ASP.NET application that pulls content from SharePoint 2010
Some organizations have decided to write a custom ASP.NET web application specifically for mobile devices. These web applications utilize the SharePoint 2010 server and/or client object model for retrieving content that will be rendered in the mobile view. This method of creating a mobile site is much more involved, but it does give a lot of flexibility in how the mobile site will render and function.

Use a 3^rd party solution to assist in the creation of SharePoint 2010 mobile sites
There are multiple 3^rd party solutions created by Microsoft partners that can be used to help build out mobile versions of public facing web sites. These solutions provide frameworks that can be used to build full featured mobile websites based upon content stored and managed in SharePoint 2010. One such solution is available from Mobile Entrée (see the additional references section below).

When designing your mobile website you will want to build a site navigation system that fits the capabilities of the devices your users are expected to use. Some mobile devices are touch screen and allow a person to navigate a web site just as if they were using a mouse on a desktop or laptop computer. Other mobile devices only have a series of arrow keys and a select button. These two different forms of navigation can have a significant impact on how you choose to design your mobile sites. Careful thought and planning is required here in order to ensure that all of your visitors have an enjoyable experience.

No matter which method you ultimately choose, you will need a way to get your mobile users to the mobile site. The most popular method is to perform browser detection on the main public URL of your web site and then redirect users with mobile browsers to the mobile specific site. Another option is to have a dedicated mobile URL that you can publish and market to your end users so they can directly access the mobile site easily. SharePoint 2010 provides a mechanism for identifying mobile browsers and performing the necessary redirections. Additional information on this feature can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms462572.aspx.

Summary
Planning is the key for any successful software development and implementation project. This holds very true for building mobile accessible web sites with SharePoint 2010. Ensure that you understand your users, the mobile devices they have, and their specific mobile information needs. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Focus on key usage scenarios and build a site that is tailored to the person who is on the go.

When a FAST crawl runs, it will pick up site column data and create a crawled property for that site column (given that there . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How To Map a Crawled Property to Managed Properties By PowerShell (FAST for SharePoint 2010)]]> Managed Properties are great! FAST pulls and indexes Managed Properties for multitudes of things, including boosting and search scopes. They are core to your FAST User Experience and an essential part to configuration

When a FAST crawl runs, it will pick up site column data and create a crawled property for that site column (given that there is data associated with this site column). In order to query this site column directly in search, first we will created a managed property from this site column.

Generally, most out of the box SharePoint site columns are already mapped to a managed property in FAST. However, custom site columns usually are not, and these are the ones that we need to target to map to a managed property.

First we will need to make sure that our site column was indeed picked up as a crawled property. In this example, we are using a custom site column called “country”. Make sure you have already executed a crawl and that there is data associated with this site column.

From PowerShell: Executing the command Get-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledProperty in the FAST PowerShell will return the entire list of crawled properties in FAST. This can get quite verbose in your PowerShell window, so if you would like to print that out to a text file for easier viewing, execute the following simple script in PowerShell:

Get-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledProperty | Out-File “C:\crawledproperty.txt”

If you know the name of your column, you can shorten the search by adding –Name.

Get-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -Name 'country'

Basic Troubleshooting: If you get an error that the cmdlet Get-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledProperty doesn’t exist, make sure that you are FAST’s PowerShell. If the error continues, add the FAST PowerShell snap-in by typing in the command: Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.FASTSearch.Powershell

From the UI: In Central Admin, go to Service Applications –> <Your FAST Query SSA> –> FAST Search Administration –> Crawled Property Categories –> SharePoint. From here you can do a search to find your site column. In general, SharePoint site columns will be preceded with “ows_”, so our returned crawled property looks like this: ows_country().

Creating Managed Property

Now that we know our site column exists as a crawled property, we need to create or find a managed property to map it to. In this case, we will simply create a new managed property.

From PowerShell:

Here, ‘-type 1’ is the type of information that we are storing in the property. Make sure you make it Queryable!

# Create New Managed Property
$nmp = New-FASTSearchMetadataManagedProperty –Name “country” –type 1 –description “Managed Property for country content type”
Set-FASTSearchMetadataManagedProperty –Name “country” –Queryable $true –StemmingEnabled
$false –RefinementEnabled  $false
$cp = Get-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledProperty –name 'ows_country'
New-FASTSearchMetadataCrawledPropertyMapping –Managedproperty $nmp –crawledproperty $cp

m the UI: Go to Service Applications –> <Your FAST Query SSA> –> FAST Search Administration –> Managed Properties. Click Add Managed Property. We will create a new managed property called “country”, type in a short description, and then click “Add Mapping”. This will bring up a menu where you will search for your crawled property. Once you find the managed property, add it and click ok. Finally, we will check “Query property”, which will allow you to use this managed property in search queries. There are also the options to make this managed property a sort property and deep refiner.

Either way we choose to create our managed property, we should be able to see it in our list of managed property names.

Crawl it!

In order to use this new managed property in search and see filtered results, we must do a content crawl. Service Applications –> <Your FAST Connector> and execute an incremental or full crawl of your content source.

After your crawl, you can query directly on this column by using it as a scope in your search. For example “country:USA”.

The following steps will teach you how to . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Configure the Target Audience for a Web Part in SharePoint 2010 Sites]]> Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 enables custom audience targeting for content and sites. The purpose is to define audiences and content that are relevant to a user or a group. As server or site administrator, you can define audiences and content for a specific set of users or group.

The following steps will teach you how to complete the configuration.

Step 1. Create two users in Active Directory which names are “test1” and “test2”.

Step 2. Log in SharePoint site with the administrator.

Step3. Go to Site Settings>Site collection features, start the “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” feature, then go to “Site collection navigation” to check if “Enable audience targeting” is selected.

Step 4. Go to Site Settings>Site Permission>Create Group, create a group named “testinggroup” whose permission level is Full control, then add “test1” to this group.

Step 5. Go to Settings>Site Permission >Grant permissions, create a user named “test2” whose permission level is Full control.

Step 6. Now let me take our product SharePointBoost Password Reset web part as an example. In the web part zone click Edit web part. In the Advanced section of the web part tool pane add the “testinggroup” into the Target Audiences box and click OK.

1. User clicks on Ribbion button “About” in the document library.

2. About button the displays the custom dialog page and passes the current library name.

3. The dialog page then parses the url . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Using Visual Studio 2010 to Create Custom Modal Dialog in SharePoint 2010]]> Below are the detailed steps to create a custom modal dialog page and show it when a ribbon button is clicked in a document library.

1. User clicks on Ribbion button “About” in the document library.

2. About button the displays the custom dialog page and passes the current library name.

3. The dialog page then parses the url parameter, Library name in our case and display the description field as text in the dialog page.

Results -

Ribbon Button

About Dialog -

Steps –

1. Create a empty project “Aboutmodaldialog”.

2. Deploy it as a Farm solution.

3. Right click on the feature and click “Add feature”.

4. Next right click on project and add a new item and select an application page “AboutDialogPage.aspx”. This will be out cutsom dialog page.

5. Open the AboutDialogPage.aspx page and add a lablel “AboutText” in PlaceHolderMain.

6. Next, write the below code in the applictaion page to display the About text for a library.

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;

        }
    }
}

You Project should look like -

7. Next we will create an empty element to display our custom ribbon button “About” which when clicked will open up

8. Next step would be to add a new “Empty Element” type item in the project. See below
9. Add the below code in the Element file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <CustomAction
    Id="AboutFilesButton"
    Location="CommandUI.Ribbon"
    RegistrationId="101"
    RegistrationType="List"
    Title="About">
    <CommandUIExtension>
      <CommandUIDefinitions>
        <CommandUIDefinition
        Location="Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.Controls._children">
          <Button Id="Ribbon.Library.ViewFormat.About"
                  Command="AboutButtonCommand"
                  LabelText="About"
                  Image32by32="/_layouts/1033/IMAGES/APPROVE.GIF"
                  TemplateAlias="o1" />
        </CommandUIDefinition>
      </CommandUIDefinitions>
      <CommandUIHandlers>
        <CommandUIHandler
        Command="AboutButtonCommand"
        CommandAction="javascript:
        var context = SP.ClientContext.get_current();
        var web = context.get_web();
        context.load(web);
        var currentlibid = SP.ListOperation.Selection.getSelectedList();
        var currentLib = web.get_lists().getById(currentlibid);
        context.load(currentLib);
        context.executeQueryAsync(
          function (sender, args) {
            if(currentLib != null) {
              var options = {
                url: '/_layouts/AboutModalDialog/AboutDialogPage.aspx?sourcelibrary='+ currentLib.get_title(),
                tite: 'About',
                allowMaximize: false,
                showClose: true,
                width: 400,
                height: 400,
            };
            SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options);
          }
        },
        function (sender, args) {
          alert('Error occured' + args.get_message());}
        );
      " />
      </CommandUIHandlers>
    </CommandUIExtension>
  </CustomAction>
</Elements>

10. Next, build and deploy your project. At this point you should see a “About” button in your document library ( under Library tab) which when clicked will display your custom modal dialog.

protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e) {    if (this.Page != null)    {       if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(SelectedListName))       {             placeHolderLiteral.Text = "Web part . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Create ‘Open Tool Pane’ link in custom .NET Web Parts for SharePoint 2010]]> Back in SharePoint 2007, it was pretty popular to use the built-in Javascript function MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane2Wrapper to put the Web part page into edit mode and have the Web part properties editable. Typically, you would put something like the following in your Web part class code:

protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
{
   if (this.Page != null)
   {
      if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(SelectedListName))
      {
            placeHolderLiteral.Text = "Web part is not configured. Please <a href="\&quot;javascript:MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane2Wrapper('Edit',">edit the Web part</a> and choose a list or library.

";
      }
   }
}

In the example above, I render a “please configure the Web part” message whenever the SelectedListName of the Web part is not set.

I’m currently developing a Web part for SharePoint 2010 and I wanted to have a “configure” link displayed for the Web part whenever Web properties (i.e. list name, view ID etc.) are not set or specified . I embed a code similar to the above snippet where I use MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane2Wrapper. It didn’t work!

So, thinking like a developer, I observe how the out-of-the-box Web parts render an “open tool pane” hyperlink. I add an Image Viewer web part to a web part page and look at the structure of the hyperlink. Here’s what I saw:

I replaced my output code in my web part class from MSOTlPn_ShowToolPane2Wrapper to ShowToolPane2Wrapper and it works!
Please note that I encourage that you put ‘this’ (object) as the second argument instead of ’129′, or ’16′ as you see in some blogs out there. The second parameter is supposed to indicate which Web part to edit. Do you really know at run-time that your Web part is ’129′ or ’16′? You don’t! So simply use ‘this’.

SharePoint stores documents in document libraries. There are folders to group different types of documents into a document library. But the problem is, it just provides a logical grouping, it doesn’t provide any special attributes, metadata or object model to support the complete set of documents. For example, a folder doesn’t allow trigger any workflows.

Solution

In SharePoint . . . → Read More: SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: How to Create and Use Document Sets in SharePoint 2010]]> Problem

SharePoint stores documents in document libraries. There are folders to group different types of documents into a document library. But the problem is, it just provides a logical grouping, it doesn’t provide any special attributes, metadata or object model to support the complete set of documents. For example, a folder doesn’t allow trigger any workflows.

Solution

In SharePoint 2010, there is a new feature called document sets which allows users to group different kind of documents under a single set. It also allows the defining of metadata, attributes and workflows on a document set. In this article, we will show you how to create and use document sets inside a document library. Before creating a document set, we need to ensure whether the Document Set feature is activated or not. To do so, go to Site Settings -> Site Administration -> Site Collection Features and Activate Document Sets feature.

In the document library, we need to add the Document Set content type. To do so, go to Library -> Library Settings -> Advanced Settings.

Select strong>Yes in “Allow management of content types?” and click OK.

Now you will be able to see the Content Types section in the Document Library settings. To add the Document Set content type, click on “Add from existing site content types”.

Select strong>Document Set aand click “Add” and then “OK”.

Now browse the Document Library and click on New -> New Document Set.

In our case, we are going to create the ‘quarterly reports’ document sets which would hold every month’s salary report.

I have also uploaded three different reports inside the document set.

Next I create a new documents set for each of the second, third and fourth quarters of 2011 inside the library.

Now we can add workflows and/or metadata that relates to each Document Set.

What is Web Deploy 2.0?

Web Deploy (Web Deployment Tool) simplifies . . . → Read More: HostForLife.EU now supports Web Deploy 2.0 Hosting]]> HostForLIFE.EU has supported Web Deploy technique on all our hosting plans. With a web deploy technique, a customer can efficiently synchronize sites, applications or servers across your IIS 7.0 server farm by detecting differences between the source and destination content and transferring only those changes which need synchronization.

What is Web Deploy 2.0?

Web Deploy (Web Deployment Tool) simplifies the migration, management and deployment of IIS Web servers, Web applications and Web sites. Administrators can use command-line scripting with Web Deploy to synchronize IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0 servers or to migrate an IIS 6.0 server to IIS 7.0. Web Deploy Tool also enables administrators and delegated users to use IIS Manager to deploy ASP.NET and PHP applications to an IIS 7.0 server. 

Web Deploy 2.0 Features             

- Seamless integration with IIS 7.0 Manager and Visual Studio 2010 interface for creating packages and deploying them onto a machine, both locally and remotely
- Seamless integration with the Web Platform Installer to install community web applications simply and easily.
- Web application packaging
- Web application deployment
- Web server migration and synchronization
- In addition to the IIS Manager and Visual Studio 10, tasks can be performed using the command-line or public APIs.