Here’s a great little script that I used to list out all of the Custom Actions available in a farm.  What’s great about the script is that it returns the CustomActions in XML so you can vary the output.  My favorite is using the Out-GridView cmdlet in Windows PowerShell 2.0. From there can...

I use SharePoint in my lab at home and recently started organizing all of my personal documents in there as well. The one thing that always concerns me is the safety of those files living in a lab environment on a Beta/RC product. So, to ease my nerves, I wrote this simple little script which runs through...

There is a optional hotfix for WCF 3.5 SP1 which is a prerequisite for SharePoint 2010.  Depending on the operating system, the relevant hotfix can be found below. Windows Server 2008 (RTM) with Service Pack 2:  KB971831 Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7:  KB976462 Instructions:  ...

In one of my previous posts , I walked through how to provision a SharePoint farm using PowerShell. You can also install SharePoint from a CD using PowerShell as well. I use this in my lab at home so I don’t have to attend the installs when I am rebuilding my virtual machines. <Update: Product Keys>...

Microsoft just released SharePoint 2010 Beta 2!  Beta 2 will consist of build 14.0.4536.1000.   For Beta 1 users only or partners running an earlier version e.g. 14.0.4514.1009 (Beta 2 Escrow), you can upgrade to Beta 2 by installing this update:  KB_COMING_SOON Download your copy...

Note: This post applies to SharePoint Server 2010 Beta 2 and Visual Studio Ultimate Beta 2. I ran into two issues today that had me tied up for a few hours so I thought I would share.  The first was simple: SPFarm _farm = SPFarm.Local;   However, the _farm object was being returned as...

These HOLs are about a month old now, but I wanted to share them for anyone who missed the announcement at SPC.  There are 10 Hands On Labs in both C# and Visual Basic for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c010fc68-b47f-4db6-b8a8...

This came up for a recent customer, so thought I would share my solution as many people are not aware of this customization possibility.  The solution ultimately solved the problem that feature staplers activate features BEFORE any lists are provisioned on a site.  So, the only eloquent way...

Here’s a great (FREE) opportunity to attend a day-long workshop completely dedicated to SharePoint.  Come learn from developers, IT Pros, consultants, and local companies who have implemented SharePoint and have a story to share. I will be presenting again this year on one of my favorite topics...

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to speak at Boston’s SharePoint Saturday .  I met some great people, enjoyed some EXCELLENT food, and talked A LOT of SharePoint. For those who couldn’t make it, here is a link to the slide deck from my session: SharePoint Administration with PowerShell View more...

I discovered a while back that it is not possible to hide the Enterprise Features “Features” because they have Activation Dependencies.  You can see more on what these features include in this post:  Enterprise Features Exposed . In a conversation this afternoon, I was talking through this...

It’s very important that anyone working with SharePoint object model be concerned with the appropriate management of memory.  Most developers are aware of the need to dispose objects properly, but we some times get sloppy when it comes to things like PowerShell. Zach Rosenfield just posted a very...

I’ve posted this under my 101 Uses for PowerShell , but I thought it was so helpful that it deserved it’s own post. The script below uses PowerShell to get a collection of event entries from the “Application” Event Log.  It passes a wildcard filter for any source like  ‘*sharepoint*’ and returns...

Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at the Twin Cities SharePoint Camp sponsored by New Horizons.  There was a great turnout for this FREE event.  If you didn’t make it this time around – be sure to make it in Summer 2009. I chose a slightly different path to head down from...

I’ve been using PowerShell 1.0 for many things SharePoint lately… including a community project with a collection of useful functions and scripts.  (Community Project:  PowerShell Pack for SharePoint can be found here ).  PowerShell provides a lot of great value.  However, scripting...

I’ve seen a couple notes regarding this on Twitter , so I thought I’d check it out for myself. A company by the name of Webstate set off to make the next best thing for the iPhone, an application that integrates with SharePoint. After doing some digging around, here are some takeaways: What to look for...

Some wonderful things are happening for SharePoint developers all across the world. Thanks to Jeremy Thake at http://wss.made4the.net/ , the SharePoint development community now has a wiki to collaborate on. You can find the wiki here: http://sharepointdevwiki.com Here’s how you can help: Follow on Twitter...

The Twin Cities SharePoint Camp has been announced for January 24, 2009.  Here are the details of the event: Course Overview Join New Horizons of Minnesota for the 2nd Bi-Annual Twin Cities SharePoint Camp Event. Spend a day with other SharePoint Administrators, Developers and End Users and learn...

I’m kicking myself for my recent hiatus from blogging...  I’ve been swamped with customer responsibilities, pre-sales work and discovering the wonderful world of social networking.  However, I have a lot of great material to share, starting with the SharePoint Pod Show ( http://www.sharepointpodshow...

I've been in some rather deep discussions on Enterprise features, so I thought I would share some findings on what they are, where they are, and what they do. First, there are three different Enterprise features that can be enabled within a farm. They are: -Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Web application...

While developing a custom feature receiver, I was attempting to delete a masterpage file from the MasterPage Gallery when I received an SPException with the message: " Cannot remove file "<filename>". Error Code 158 " Since I found no help on the web, I thought I would share this simple solution...

Using PowerShell to support SharePoint has saved me quite a bit of time. I can do just about everything I would do in .NET, only without firing up Visual Studio just to check a property of a SPWeb object. I have compiled a collection of PowerShell functions and methods that I commonly use. It's in...

We've all struggled with using VPCs for our SharePoint development. Thanks to Bamboo Solutions , we can now install WSS and MOSS on our host laptops running under Vista. Check out this page for steps on how to complete this. Downloads SQL Server Express Edition SQL Server Management Studio...

I talk to many developers who are still using "xcopy" to deploy some of their SharePoint files to the 12 Hive (especially trust files and custom stsadm commands). It is well known that the manifest.xml file within a WSP can be configured to deploy assemblies to the GAC, update a web.config, and deploy...

Let's say you upgrade WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0 and you've just installed MOSS 2007. You are now trying to create a new Shared Services Provider, but you immediately receive warnings at the top: No indexers To resolve this, you need to configure your search service. However, when you view the available services...