Share Points

What's this tagging about!!

NigelBridport — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:39:00 GMT

So, thankyou Liam, I have been tagged, whatever that really means.

The task being to write 5 things about myself that others may not know.

The most important one for me is that I am most definately a family man. I am married with 3 kids. Currently, the eldest is 8, then 3 and a little one at 1 (Who still insists on getting me and the wife up in the middle of the night :-( hence why it seems that I am permanently tired during the day and a bit grumpy). Immensly proud of my family and they are number 1.
Been a computer games fan since I can remember (Well, late 70's anyway). I had an Grandstand Pong system which had some "different" games. As different as rearranging the position of your bat I suppose. This meant I could play Tennis, Squash, Target Shooting, Hockey against someone else. Then got an ATARI 2600 console. This was a real revolution at the time and discarded my Pong machine to a friend at school for a fiver. Then got a Texas Instruments TI 99-4A. This had some really cool games such as TI Invaders, Munchman,5 A-Side Soccer. I can remember spending many hours copying source code from some magazine only to find that I had mistyped something so then spending further hours tediously going over what I had done. Then some Sega consoles, Nintendo and of course Xbox and most recently Xbox 360 (My gamertag is "Baron Sparky") which I love, especially connected up wirelessly to my Media Centre.
"Used" to play a lot of sports. Played a lot of cricket and football when I was young, then squash as I got older. Was in a good side for cricket but the football was not so successful. I was the captain of our local side and I think we won 1 game in 2 seasons :-( Also used to do a lot of Judo and a Korean martial art called Tang Soo Do
I have been with Microsoft UK for nearly 9 years now. Joined from another American company called Digital Equipment Corporation where I used to part of the development team working on email backbones and gateways called MAILbus.
Lifelong Liverpool FC supporter. I can still remember the heady days of the 70's where no side could touch them.

So, who to "tag" next. It has to be 5 of my friends and colleagues here at Microsoft UK who I know have blogs. (Thankfully, most of my friends are not technical apart from those I work with)

I have enourmous respect for these guys! We all work for Microsoft in the UK and passionate about the products we work with.

SharePoint Product Team Blog

NigelBridport — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:11:00 GMT

The SharePoint Product team has recently launched their own blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

This is a must read with articles initially from Kurt Delbene, Corporate VP of the Office Servers group, and Jeff Teper, General Manager of SharePoint Portal, Search and Content Management.

We are promised many more entries from the senior SharePoint development team in the near future.

80-20 Software - Retention Server for SharePoint

NigelBridport — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:38:00 GMT

A great add-on for SharePoint and it is free. Retention Server from 80-20 Software has just been formally released!

For organizations using Microsoft SharePoint that need to manage the retention lifecycle of electronic documents and email, 80-20 Retention Server is a free enterprise software solution that automates the retention process by applying information retention policies as part of everyday business processes.

80-20 Retention Server enables organizations to index, link, store, search, access and ultimately disposes of records stored in SharePoint over their complete lifecycle.

Updated Search WebPart (Document Details)

NigelBridport — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 12:58:00 GMT

My previous post supplied a webpart to customise the Search Results.

Thanks to some feedback, we discovered that the search results for Documents stored in a Portal Area was not working correctly, so I have updated the ZIP with the new code that seems to work.

However, you may need to configure this one! The issue was found because the SPS index does not carry information, other than URLs, as to whether the result came from a WSS Site or a Portal Area. When the Document was in a Portal Area, the code would malform the URL for the Document Details page. So, the fix I have put in is to see whether the URL has "/sites/" after the Portal URL, i.e. http://portal/sites/Bridport. If it does not, then it assumes that the document is for a Portal Area. If it does, then it assumes it is a WSS Document.

Now, I realise that not everyone keeps the default "/sites/" container for their WSS sites so, this is configurable. If your WS Sites container was changed at install/configuration time, then update the new custom property for the webpart as shown below!

Another Custom Search Result WebPart. Document Details page in WSS!

NigelBridport — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 14:02:00 GMT

I was recently asked how to change the search results for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 so that when a user selected a document from the search results, instead of actually opening the document which is the current default behaviour of SPS, that the user should be directed to the documents' details page within the relevant WSS site. This is because typically some users actually want to view the documents details before deciding to open it. This also gives the user the ability to check out the document before opening it, etc.

So, the solution we came up with was to change the default search results webpart to look like below:

The code is pretty easy but got a bit messy with document libraries that has a folder structure within it. But it looks like it works!

As you can see, there is an option to "To open this document Click Here", instead the URL of the document which is normally displayed by default. On selecting this option, you are taken to the relevant WSS document details page as shown below: (This is also true if you select the document name)

For the fully built CAB and source files, and the Visual Studio Project directory, please go here.

Extract the files to your SharePoint Portal Server, i.e. your C:\ root directory. (If you extract to another location, then you will have to modify the setup and removal batch files to point to the new location)
Drill down through the /Deploy/Debug directory and there you will find the built CAB and batch files
Run the SearchOverrideSetup.BAT file and run it or if you are familiar with the STSADM utility, just install the CAB

To see the enhanced results in your portal, follow the instructions from my previous thread http://blogs.msdn.com/nigelbridport/archive/2004/10/27/248439.aspx

But basically:

http://<SPSserver>/search.aspx?mode=edit&PageView=Shared on the portal you want to effect
Browse through your Virtual Server catalog looking for Search Results Document Detail web part
Drag it to just below the default Search Results web part
Close the default Search Results web part (otherwise you will get two sets of results and a script error)
Go back to your Portals home page and do a search.

That's it!

I would be really interested to hear if this works for you and if you make any modifications to it.

Cell Connections, Row Connections and Filter Connections Samples

NigelBridport — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:34:00 GMT

I said previously that I would post the sample web parts that show the ICellProvider, ICellConsumer, IRowProvider, IRowConsumer, IFilterProvider and IFilterConsumer in action so here they are. Just click below for the appropriate Visual Studio Porject files.

Please note that these samples are written in VB.net

There is a bit of setup that you will have to go through that I will try to explain here.

Firstly, install the CAB files from the CellConnections.ZIP and/or the RowConnections.ZIP
- If you only want to use the CellConnections sample, skip the rest of the setup instructions.
If you also want to see the Row and Filter connections working:
- Download ConnectionResources.ZIP This is 5MB but is due to the .WMVs that are in there. (PLEASE NOTE: I have just copied the same smallish WMV with apprpriate names. So they are all the same. Just download the correct WMV from a site and replace this template - The file was just too big for me to be able to host otherwise)
- Create a folder, I created mine at C:\XBox.
- Drop the contents of XBox from ConnectionResources.ZIP into the new folder
- Create a new virtual server in IIS that points to that folder as the root. To get the parts working without having to tweak the code, I would put the Virtual Server on port 801, so you can refer the http://localhost:801 and get to the resource files. (Just a few images)
- Next, navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\wpresources\RowConnections\1.0.0.0__38a6d1a988993080 because the web parts are strongly named and in the Global Assembly Cache, this folder should already be there.
- Drop the contents of 1.0.0.0_38a6d1a988993080 from the ConnectionResources.ZIP into that directory

With the CABS installed, you should be already to go!

CellConnections Sample

Go to the site you want to use and then select to add web parts. From the Virtual Server Gallery, arrange the web parts Demo21: Cell Provider, Demo22: Cell Consumer (Summary), Demo23: Cell Consumer (Fields) and Demo24: Cell Connections (Script) onto the page and arrange as below:

Wire them up and then when you click on the Cell Provider List and then CellReady, you will see the other parts change appropriately.

RowConnections Sample

Go to the site you want to use and then select to add web parts. From the Virtual Server Gallery, arrange the web parts Demo41: Filter Provider, Demo31: Row Provider, Demo32: Row Consumer (Summary), Demo33: Row Consumer (Video), Demo34: Row Consumer (Details) and Demo35: Row Consumer (Box Artwork) onto the page and arrange as below:

Wire them up and then when you click on the button on the Row Provider part, the others should respond appropriately.

Custom Search Results

NigelBridport — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 12:02:00 GMT

For the fully built CAB and source files, the Visual Studio Project directory, please go here.

Extract the files to your machine.
Drill down through the "/Deploy/Debug" directory and there you will find the built CAB.
Modify the BAT file and run it or if you are familiar with the STSADM utility, just install the CAB

To see the enhanced results in your portal, follow the instructions from my previous thread http://blogs.msdn.com/nigelbridport/archive/2004/10/27/248439.aspx

But basically:

http://<SPSserver>/search.aspx?mode=edit&PageView=Shared on the portal you want to effect
Browse through your Virtual Server catalog looking for Search Override web part
Drag it to just below the default Search Results web part
Close the default Search Results web part (otherwise you will get two sets of results
Go back to your Portals home page and do a search.

That's it!

I would be really interested to hear if this works for you and if you make any modifications to it, what they are so I can get a sense of what you think is missing from the out-of-the-box results.

SharePoint Portal Search Results Demystified (Well starting to)

NigelBridport — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 10:42:00 GMT

Recently, I presented at the UK Office Developers Conference at Heathrow. One of the subjects I spoke about was enhancing and extending the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Search and I did say that I would post some of that information, as well as the samples I used (including the web part connection samples), up on my blog.

So, this is the first of a few posts and is about explaining the format of the Search Results and the functions that you as a developer can use to override it to fix it up to look like YOU want.

The next post will be one of the custom Search Results web parts that I demonstrated that uses one of the override functions to add a new button (This will be the built version of a previous post here)

So...

The Search Results is split into a number of Rows and Columns and looks like:

You can see that each major functional area of the Search Results can be referred to uniquely.

Now, you can control what each element looks like by using the following functions:

Name	Description
protected virtual string GenerateHtmlForItemIcon ( System.Data.DataRow objectDataRow, int iIndexOfItemInDataSet, int iIndexOfItemInGroup, string strElemIDPrefix)	Generates the HTML that displays the icon for the specified DataRow object in the search result set. iIndexOfItemInDataSet Index of row in the result DataSet. iIndexOfItemInGroup Index of an item in a group when grouping is enabled. This index is used to expand and collapse groups of results. objectDataRow DataRow that represents a single item. strElemIDPrefix This element is used for HTML automation and is reserved for internal use only.
protected virtual void GenerateHtmlForRowColumn( System.Data.DataRow oneDataRow, System.Text.StringBuilder strColumnHtml, int iColumn)	Generates the HTML for the specified column of data for the specified DataRow object in the search result set. oneDataRow: Reference to the DataRow in the result set. strColumnHtml: StringBuilder that contains the HTML for the specified column. HTML is appended to this string. iColumn: Index of the column with HTML content to modify.
protected virtual void GenerateHtmlOneRowForOneItem( System.Data.DataRow oneDataRow, class System.Text.StringBuilder sbRenderRowHtml, int rowID, string strStyleClass, int iIndexOfItemInDataSet, int iIndexOfItemInGroup)	Generates the HTML for the specified column and row of data for the specified DataRow object in the search result set. oneDataRow: DataRow that represents the item in the result set. sbRenderRowHtml: StringBuilder that contains the HTML for the specified row. rowID: Index of the row of data to generate. 0 indicates that the first HTML table row. strStyleClass: Style from the stylesheet that applies to this row. This parameter is reserved for internal use. iIndexOfItemInDataSet: Index of this item in the result set to render. 0 represents the first item. iIndexOfItemInGroup: Index of this item in its group. This value is used to expand and collapse the result group in the browser.
protected virtual string GenerateQueryString( string strKeyword, System.Collections.ArrayList rgScopeList, string strWhereAndPart, [out] string strSavedQuery)	Generates the SQL Full-Text Search Syntax query that produces the current result set. • strKeyword: List of keywords specified for this query. rgScopeList :List of search scopes specified for this query. strWhereAndPart: WHERE clause for the query. strSavedQuery: Out parameter that receives the return value from this method.

The next post will demonstrate how to use the GenerateHtmlOneRowForOneItem function in C#

SPUM2003 X1.1 - (V1.0 will be SPUser.EXE)

NigelBridport — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:58:00 GMT

Made some progress on SPUM2003 and I have now decided to release version X1.1 for you guys to look at.

Please be aware of the following:

Whats in over version X1.0

Ability to add users to a WSS site
Ability to delete users from a WSS site
Ability to edit users on a WSS site
Double-click on a node in the treeview will open the site in a new browser
Some error handling gone in
Should display some information on user alerts
Render out all site roles, including custom ones
Got some icons in the treeview to refelct what the site type is

Stuff that hasn't yet made it:

SPS Object Model. Still working on giving the ability to perform user management on SPS Areas. (Version X1.2)
Cross site groups are not yet showing up. Not absolutely sure why yet as I have dropped the code in but it never seems to be able to find them!

Stuff that is odd:

If you delete a user from a site and then re-add that user, with different details such as user name, notes, etc, then the previous information is restored. Do not know why yet so the process to add a "new" user who has been on the site before is to add them account and give them a role and then select and edit them.

If you find any bugs with user management in WSS, then please leave information on how to reproduce as feedback to this post please! Also, any suggestions on how you would like to see the interface changed to make it more intuitive.

Download version X1.1

SharePoint Branding

NigelBridport — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:23:00 GMT

Dan has just managed to get a couple of new articles published on MSDN that are concerned with branding SharePoint Sites.

This is a must read for anyone who is serious about customising the look'n'feel of SharePoint.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/odc_SP2003_ta/html/Office_SharePointApplyingCorporateBrand.asp

Please go and check it out.