Alex Tcherniakhovski - Security : Sharepoint

Adding self-service component to your ILM 2007 solutions by utilizing MySite SharePoint facility

alextch — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:38:00 GMT

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

Adding self-service component to your ILM 2007 solutions by utilizing MySite SharePoint facility

In this walkthrough I am taking a look at a possibility of utilizing MySite facility of SharePoint as a mechanism to provide self-service for ILM 2007 based solution. Specifically, I will examine a scenario of using MySite to trigger updates of personal information, and propagating such information into other systems (ex. Active Directory).

To see the screen-cast, please, follow this link.

Connecting ILM 2007 with SharePoint Services Lists

alextch — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:19:00 GMT

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

In this blog I explore the possibilities of using information stored in SharePoint Services V3.0 lists to drive provisioning processes (specifically integration with Active Directory). The idea behind this approach is to merge provisioning and synchronization capabilities of ILM with collaboration and workflow components of SharePoint Services 3.0.

Please, follow this link for a complete walkthrough.

This is my second posting on this subject. In my first post “Adding workflow components into your MIIS solutions” I examined the scenario of integration of ILM with SharePoint InfoPath Libraries. Both solutions have similar goals: to utilize workflow capabilities of WSS 3.0 and to propagate information stored in SharePoint throughout the enterprise. At the same time the underlying extensible management agents utilize different technologies to accomplish the integration with WSS 3.0. The connector for InfoPath libraries utilizes Microsoft.SharePoint.dll and the connector for SharePoint Lists leverages SharePoint Web Services. Since Microsoft.SharePoint.dll can only be utilized on the same server where WSS is running, the first solution is ideal for scenarios where Workflow needs to be added to ILM provisioning processes (in other words MIIS and WSS need to be running on the same box), also InfoPath forms provide richer capabilities to workflow (ex. Digital signatures, Role based views, data validation, etc). The List Connector, on the other hand, uses SharePoint Web Services; therefore MIIS and WSS could be running on different servers, this connector is ideal for scenarios where extracting employee information from WSS is required. I am hoping one day to combine those two connectors into one, so that we don’t have be concerned whether the data resides in a list or a InfoPath library. For now depending on what you are trying to accomplish you will have to choose the appropriate solution.

Additional Links

Walkthrough: How to build an extensible management agent for MIIS

Adding workflow components into your MIIS solutions

Sample .NET code that retrieves data stored in a SharePoint list

alextch — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:29:00 GMT

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

Quite often we need to pull some data stored in a SharePoint list. If the application is running on the SharePoint server then we could use Microsoft.SharePoint dll to gain access to data, but if your application is running outside SharePoint server then you need to rely on SharePoint Web services. In this case we will be using Lists service exposed by SharePoint to get to the data.

WSS 3.0 SDK provides a good starting point for solving this task. Here is a link to a code sample provided in the SDK How to: Return List Items

Unfortunately, unless you are an experienced SharePoint developer you may run into a couple of problems with this sample. In this blog I will try to provide some additional explanations of the code and also add a few lines to make the sample a bit friendlier.

So the code listed below will retrieve data from a SharePoint list located at http://moss01/Lists/alex. The list is very simple and contains 2 columns: Titl and firstName. I am going to highlight the blocks if code that were not intuitive to me and required some furhter investigation on my part.

1. Adding Web Reference

WSS 3.0 SDK contains a table of all the Web Services that are exposed by WSS. Since in our case we will be accessing Lists service and my list resides at the root site, the url of the Web Reference should be http://moss01/sites/_vti_bin/lists.asmx.

If the list resided in a site named IT, then the Web Reference would be http://moss01/sites/IT/_vti_bin/lists.asmx

2. In my lab the machine that I was accessing the WSS from was not part of the domain so I needed to provide explicite credentitals. Here is how you could achieve this:

CredentialCache credCache = new CredentialCache();

credCache.Add(new Uri("http://moss01"), "Negotiate",

new NetworkCredential("administrator", "pass@word1", "contoso"));

listService.Credentials = credCache

If you want to run your code in the security context of the currenlty logged-on user then change the sample like so:

listService.Credentials =

System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

3. SDK recommends to use GUIDs of the List and View when accessing them. So where do we find those GUIDs? Here is at least one way how to do this:

Access the list via your browser, then go to Settings->List Settings (I assume you are using WSS 3.0). Copy the URL from your browser, it should look something like this:

http://moss01/_layouts/listedit.aspx?List=%7BBAA69F38%2DDBC7%2D4ACD%2D82EE%2D2BC094B7F1E6%7D.

Copy the part after the List=. Now substitute %7B for {, %7D for } and %2d for -. This should give you the resulting GUID, in my case it was {BAA69F38-DBC7-4ACD-82EE-2BC094B7F1E6}. While still in the List Settings click on the view that you would like to use when accessing your list. In my case I only have the default “All Items” view.

Copy the URL from your browser, it will look somewhat like this:

http://moss01/_layouts/ViewEdit.aspx?List=%7BBAA69F38%2DDBC7%2D4ACD%2D82EE%2D2BC094B7F1E6%7D&View=%7B2321D570%2D2A5C%2D4EC1%2D89D1%2DD5DF9FAA9E3C%7D&Source=%252F%255Flayouts%252Flistedit%252Easpx%253FList%253D%25257BBAA69F38%25252DDBC7%25252D4ACD%25252D82EE%25252D2BC094B7F1E6%25257D

Copy the data between View= and &Source. Perform the same substituions as we did for the List GUID, this will provide you with the GUID of the view.

4. Now once we executed

XmlNode nodeListItems = listService.GetListItems(listName, viewName, query, viewFields, rowLimit, queryOptions, null), how do we actually retrieve data from it. In order to understand the sample I think it would be helpful to take a look at the raw XML that is being returned.

Here is what I got in my case:

<z:row ows_Title="01" ows_firstName="Alex" ows_MetaInfo="1;#" ows__ModerationStatus="0" ows__Level="1" ows_ID="1" ows_owshiddenversion="2" ows_UniqueId="1;#{8DF2619B-1405-4D7A-90F6-3F1E39C8544D}" ows_FSObjType="1;#0" ows_Created="2007-08-28 12:33:41" ows_FileRef="1;#Lists/alex/1_.000" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" />

<z:row ows_Title="02" ows_firstName="tom" ows_MetaInfo="2;#" ows__ModerationStatus="0" ows__Level="1" ows_ID="2" ows_owshiddenversion="2" ows_UniqueId="2;#{09CE20A5-1B01-49E9-BA96-5542E3473B82}" ows_FSObjType="2;#0" ows_Created="2007-08-28 13:16:21" ows_FileRef="2;#Lists/alex/2_.000" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" />

</rs:data>

A couple of observations here:

· A prefix of ows_ is being added to the column names, so don’t try to look for the Title column; remember to prefix your columns with ows_.

· The rows of the list are returned in the z:row nodes which are children of the rs:data node

Here some sample code that will extract the values from XML

XmlNode nodeListItems =

listService.GetListItems(listName, viewName, query, viewFields, rowLimit, queryOptions, null);

XmlDataDocument xmlDocResult = new XmlDataDocument();

xmlDocResult.LoadXml(nodeListItems.InnerXml);

XmlNodeList rows = xmlDocResult.GetElementsByTagName("z:row");

foreach (XmlNode attribute in rows)

{

Console.WriteLine(attribute.Attributes["ows_Title"].Value);

Console.WriteLine(attribute.Attributes["ows_firstName"].Value);

}

5. I commented out this statement from the SDK sample

//query.InnerXml = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name=\"ID\" />" +

// "<Value Type=\"Counter\">1</Value></Gt></Where>";

This statement is meant to add some paramters to the query so that only a subset of the data is returned. Spefically only rows with ID (each row in the list has it is own unique ID) greater then 3 will be returned. Since I only had 2 rows in my list, I would be getting nothing back. For details on Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) see MSDN documentation.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Net;

using System.Xml;

namespace ConsoleApplication1

{

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

/*Declare and initialize a variable for the Lists Web service.*/

WebReference.Lists listService = new WebReference.Lists();

/*Populate credential cache with account information which posseses sufficient priviliges to access the list */

CredentialCache credCache = new CredentialCache();

credCache.Add(new Uri("http://moss01"), "Negotiate",

new NetworkCredential("administrator", "pass@word1", "contoso"));

listService.Credentials = credCache;

// Instantiate an XmlDocument object

System.Xml.XmlDocument xmlDoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

// Assign values to the string parameters of the GetListItems //method, using GUIDs for the listName

// and viewName variables. For listName, using the list display //name will also work, but using the list GUID is

// recommended. For viewName, only the view GUID can be used. //Using an empty string for viewName forcese the default view

string listName = "{BAA69F38-DBC7-4ACD-82EE-2BC094B7F1E6}";

string viewName = "{2321D570-2A5C-4EC1-89D1-D5DF9FAA9E3C}";

string rowLimit = "150";

/*Use the CreateElement method of the document object to create elements for the parameters that use XML.*/

XmlElement query = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Query");

XmlElement viewFields = xmlDoc.CreateElement("ViewFields");

XmlElement queryOptions = xmlDoc.CreateElement("QueryOptions");

/*To specify values for the parameter elements (optional), assign CAML fragments to the InnerXml property of each element.*/

//query.InnerXml = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name=\"ID\" />" +

// "<Value Type=\"Counter\">1</Value></Gt></Where>";

viewFields.InnerXml =

"<FieldRef Name=\"Title\" /><FieldRef Name=\"firstName\" />";

queryOptions.InnerXml = "";

/* Declare an XmlNode object and initialize it with the XML response from the GetListItems method. The last parameter specifies the GUID of the Web site containing the list. Setting it to null causes the Web site specified by the Url property to be used.*/

XmlNode nodeListItems =

listService.GetListItems(listName, viewName, query, viewFields, rowLimit, queryOptions, null);

XmlDataDocument xmlDocResult = new XmlDataDocument();

xmlDocResult.LoadXml(nodeListItems.InnerXml);

XmlNodeList rows = xmlDocResult.GetElementsByTagName("z:row");

foreach (XmlNode attribute in rows)

{

Console.WriteLine(attribute.Attributes["ows_Title"].Value);

Console.WriteLine(attribute.Attributes["ows_firstName"].Value);

}

Console.ReadLine();

}

Adding workflow components into your MIIS solutions

alextch — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:54:00 GMT

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

In this blog I explore the possibilities of integrating SharePoint Services V3.0 workflow capabilities into MIIS based provisioning solutions. The idea behind this approach is to merge provisioning and synchronization capabilities of MIIS with collaboration and workflow components of SharePoint Services 3.0.

Please, follow this link for a complete walkthrough.

Additional Links

Populating InfoPath 2007 Forms with data from Active Directory

Walkthrough: How to build an extensible management agent for MIIS

How To Programmatically Enumerate SharePoint Document Library Folder

alextch — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:34:00 GMT

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

I am working on project where I needed to programmatically enumerate the list of documents stored in the SharePoint Document Library. As it quite often turns out this task is fairly trivial once you figure out the right approach. Let me provide a quick walk-through on how I accomplished this task.

Background

SharePoint provides various Web Services that allow a developer to extract all sorts of information regarding SharePoint. On of such Web Services is Site Data Service, and one of the methods of this Web Service is EnumerateFolder. Once you know this the reset is easy.

See this walkthrough for details

Unable to login to SharePoint Central Administration Site during installation of SharePoint in Farm configuration

alextch — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:42:00 GMT

Unable to login to SharePoint Central Administration Site during installation of SharePoint in Farm configuration

I am fairly new to SharePoint, but needed to set it up on my lab server. Since my lab server already had SQL Server installed I used Farm installation option. Also I used a dedicated Domain account to run SharePoint Application Pool on IIS.

One of the issues that you may run into in this configuration is that fact that the account under which the SharePoint application pool is running needs write access to certain directories under c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\v.1.1.4322\Temporary ASP.NET Files\ (note that the version of .NET framework may vary on your server). If the account under which your SharePoint pool is running does not have write access to this folder and its subfolders than during the initial configuration of the SharePoint you will not be able to login to the SharePoint Central Administration Site (you are being asked 3 times for login credentials and after 3rd time you get a generic ASP.NET exception message).

To further troubleshoot this issue you can edit the web.config under c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extension\60\template\admin\1033. Set the customErrors Mode to On. This will replace the generic ASP.NET exception message with a more detailed error output, which in my case pointed to the fact that the process could not write to the ASP.NET temporary folder (full path mentioned earlier). After giving the SharePoint modify permissions the temporary ASP.NET folder and it's subfolders I was able to continue with the setup.