December, 2010

I'm a Content Publishing Manager at Microsoft responsible for the SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Business Connectivity Services developer documentation on MSDN. Our deliverables include the SharePoint 2010 SDK (published online and as an offline download ), the SharePoint Developer Center , Technical Articles , and Visual How-To’s . We would like to know what you think about the SharePoint 2010 developer content we've published out on MSDN so far. We are currently focused on identifying and filling gaps in our documentation set, as well as adding best practices guidance. Here are some of the questions which may guide our conversation: Is the current content set helpful? What do you think are the biggest gaps in our content today? What do you want to see more of?  What can we do better? We’re aware that developers simply love code samples and best practices. What areas would you prefer we target first? Your input will help our team understand the current needs and prioritize our efforts...

You can easily create connections between web parts in SharePoint Foundation, and the Walkthrough: Creating Connectable Web Parts in SharePoint Foundation topic has been recently updated to demonstrate how to do this in SharePoint Foundation 2010 with a few steps.  Create an interface for that data that is to be shared between web parts. Create a method in a provider web part and apply the ConnectionProvider attribute. Create a method in a consume web part and apply the ConnectionConsumer attribute. There is also an associated C# and VB code sample in the MSDN Code Gallery that demonstrates how this can be done. Soon, there will be a video that demonstrates these steps. The video is now available! Between the updated topics, code sample, and video, there is no reason you can’t become an expert at connecting web parts. Mary Lee, Programming Writer.

SharePoint Designer (SPD) workflows are declarative i-e they have no code and the entire workflow is defined using xml files. When working against SharePoint Server 2010 SPD auto-generates InfoPath task edit forms for the workflow with fields defined by the user in the workflow for each task action. When you import this workflow to Visual Studio 2010, using ‘Import Reusable Workflow’ template, the InfoPath forms are brought over in Visual Studio but they are not hooked up to run on F5 with the converted Visual Studio workflow. Here are the steps explaining how to get SPD’s task forms working in Visual Studio. The below steps are for an SPD workflow having a single task form which is generated in SPD when you add a “collect data from user” action in the workflow definition. Remember, if you have initiation/association forms as well in the SPD workflow you need to import those as well in-order to see your task form working (see my previous post on how to do this - http://blogs.msdn.com/b...

SharePoint Designer (SPD) workflows are declarative, i-e they have no code and the entire workflow is defined using xml files. When working against SharePoint Server 2010 SharePoint Designer auto-generates InfoPath forms for the workflow with fields defined by the user in the workflow. When you import this workflow to Visual Studio, using ‘Import Reusable Workflow’ template, the InfoPath forms are brought over in Visual Studio but they are not hooked up to run on F5 with the converted Visual Studio workflow. Here are the steps explaining how to get SPD’s initiation/association forms working in Visual Studio. Notes: 1. If the InfoPath form name contains some special characters, like whitespace, the steps below might run into problems, and some paths might need to be fixed up. 2. It is best to use the actual server URL when testing out the Workflow. Forms won’t load if you browse to localhost. 1. Creating the SPD Workflow with InfoPath forms 1) Create a new reusable workflow on your SharePoint...

There has been a lot of talk about tokenization behavior with regards to the Server ribbon in SharePoint 2010. I hope that this blog post can help some of you that are running into problems using tokens. In general, here are the tokens that are resolved and where they are resolved: Location ListUrlDir ItemId ItemUrl RecurrenceId SiteUrl ListId Source SelectedListId SelectedItemId List View Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes List Form Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Custom actions in SharePoint Foundation 2010 can be categorized in two ways: filtered and unfiltered custom actions. A filtered custom action is one that uses the RegistrationId and RegistrationType attributes, for example to target a specific list. An unfiltered custom action is one that does not use these attributes. Their behavior when handling URL tokens is different dependent upon the type of custom action being used to customize the Server ribbon. The following table lists the tokens and how they’re resolved in different...

I’m Andrew May, a programmer-writer on the SharePoint developer documentation team. If you’re like me, you’ve noticed that over the past few years, a number of MSDN blogs have been created that deal, at least in part, with SharePoint development, to the point where it’s sometimes challenging keeping up with them all. So, to make it easy for developers to make sure they’re getting all the latest technical information around developing SharePoint solutions, we’ve decided to combine those blogs into the one you’re now reading: the SharePoint Development Team Blog. Think of it as your one-stop shop for developer-centric SharePoint information, straight from the product teams and user assistance folk responsible for SharePoint Foundation, Server, SharePoint Online, and the SharePoint development tools in Visual Studio. Here’s what you can expect from this blog going forward: · Detailed technical information on SharePoint development...