While speaking in Kuala Lumpur for the Ignite developer training, Chris O’Connor (aka @grumpiewookie ) jokingly said that the whole apps for Office thing needed something catchy, something nostalgic.  We need some obscure JavaScript library to do something interesting, something entertaining yet...

I received the following question on the SPYam group on Yammer, and decided to share the information with the broader audience via my blog. For SharePoint security Microsoft always recommended to use Active directory group inside SharePoint group. But this guidance now changed Microsoft now recommend...

This post will show how you can secure a web site based on if a user has been given a badge in a SharePoint 2013 community site. Badges and Reputation in SharePoint 2013 Community Sites SharePoint 2013 Community Sites provide a new set of features to implement game theory, or gamification. One...

I recently attained the Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint 2010 certification.  I have long wanted to write about the experience, but honestly didn’t know how to begin.  After quite a few conversations with friends and colleagues, I thought I would share some insight about the process...

This post will show you how to inspect the SharePoint 2013 context token to better understand how OAuth is used in SharePoint 2013 apps. First, Some Context In order to use a context token with SharePoint 2013 apps, you will need to create a provider-hosted app that uses a client ID and a client secret...

I worked this weekend to prepare for a presentation this week at the Dallas SharePoint TechFest , “Access Services 2013 – Not Your Father’s Access!”  I am covering the new features of Access 2013 as an app designer for SharePoint 2013.  While presenting on Access, I frequently say that while...

The Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 have been released and have some fantastic new additions in them for building apps.  This blog post covers some of the new features that you’ll want to be familiar with. New Project Item Templates There are a few project item templates...

This post demonstrates the app only policy for SharePoint 2013 app development and show how to create SharePoint 2013 apps using OAuth tokens with either a trust to ACS as well as S2S.  I show how to request the AllowAppOnlyPolicy permission and how to execute actions that the current user is not...

This post provides PowerShell script to easily configure forms based authentication using LDAP in SharePoint 2010 or 2013. A long time ago, I wrote a post that shows how to configure the SQL Server Provider for FBA in SharePoint 2010 . I also wrote an accompanying post on how to automate configuring...

This is more of a note to myself than anything, but what the heck, why not share it with everyone else? I frequently build new SharePoint farms for development and testing, and I usually create a new domain controller and populate it with users.  One of my favorite scripts is by Mark Rhodes, “ Adding...

This post shows how to create a High Trust app using Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 - Preview 2 tools. During SharePoint Conference 2012, Scott Guthrie announced the release of Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 - Preview 2 . These are the tools to add to...

UPDATE: See White Paper: Office 2013--Access Services Setup for an On-Premises Installation for updated guidance for configuring Access Services 2013 for the RTM version. Recently I co-presented the developer track for Ignite training with Andrew Connell. The training, developed by Critical Path...

This post provides PowerShell script to easily configure SQL FBA in SharePoint 2010. A long time ago, I wrote a blog post that shows how to configure the SQL Server Provider for FBA in SharePoint 2010 .  I have been working on a project that requires me to configure FBA, and I got kind of tired...

This post will discuss what the SharePoint 2010 My Site Cleanup Timer Job is, what it does, and how to manage it.  If you need to implement your own cleanup process, this post will also provide building blocks for implementing your own solution to manage deleted users and My Sites. What is the My...

This post will show how to set the PortalSuperUser and PortalSuperReader accounts for SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell. Background I frequently create web applications in my SharePoint 2010 environment that use Windows claims authentication.  When you specify the authentication to use claims, an...

This post intends to tell you everything you need to know about host named site collections so that you can decide if they are appropriate for your environment.  This post is NOT telling you to run out and create everything as host named site collections in SharePoint, instead it is meant to help...

This post shows how to update a field with a managed metadata term. Background As with all software projects, requirements change as soon as you deliver.  We created a huge list based on a nested folder structure. Of course, our customer thought navigating this was too cumbersome, requiring them...

In a previous post, I wrote about creating a large list with PowerShell .  Now that the data is in SharePoint, how do you get the data back out? As a reminder, here is the structure that I created, where each “subsubfolder” contains 500 items, giving us a grand total of 50,000 items in a list named...

Working with a customer, we noticed a large number of errors in the Windows Application event log for error 6398.  The errors look like: The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.SharePoint.Diagnostics.SPSqlDeadlockDiagnosticProvider (ID c020fbe2-7771-495c-95dd-ad7fb680e2e5) threw an exception...

I was working on a customer problem and needed a very large list to try to reproduce a problem.  I typically fire up Visual Studio and create Yet Another Console App.  You know, one of the hundred or so “ConsoleApplication1” projects that litter your My Documents/Visual Studio/Projects folder...

This post demonstrates how to use the JOIN syntax in CAML. A customer pinged me asking about how to write a JOIN query in CAML.  Honestly, I haven’t done this since in a long time, so it took awhile to shake off the cobwebs.  I tried to make things explicit and easy to reproduce in your environment...

Working with a customer, we saw that they had 20 or so web application pools, each with 1 web application each.  The software boundary for SharePoint 2010 is to have no more than 10 web application pools .  Because each application pool can have multiple web applications assigned to it, and...

This post shows how to download a WSP from SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell. Background A customer of mine had a scenario where they needed to download a WSP from SharePoint 2010.  In the Central Administration screen, a link is not available for you to download the WSP solution. Likewise, with...

This post shows how to set up a SharePoint environment to explore the multilingual user interface (MUI).  Background I admit to being a typical American.  When I write applications, I hardly ever use resource files to support any language other than English.  My friend Derek Noonan sent...

This post will show you how to ensure Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell" has been executed in all PowerShell windows. Background I have been doing a lot of work in PowerShell lately, and found myself frequently in the PowerShell ISE window writing scripts.  I was constantly...