edhild's WebLog : SharePoint

My Presentation for Tomorrow's SharePoint Best Practices Conference

edhild — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:52:00 GMT

I just wanted to post the deck I will be using for my session (SPDev 314) at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in Reston. My session includes mostly demos around document generation scenarios with SharePoint. There is a lot of use of the new Open XML SDK. Most of the code samples have already made it onto this blog. So I'll just post the deck. Enjoy!

http://cid-601cfa765e7a6fd3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/conference/SPDEV314%20Hild.pptx

Demoing Geneva Beta 2 with MOSS 2007

edhild — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:29:00 GMT

I put together a little video demo of using Geneva Beta 2 stuff with MOSS 2007. You can get these VMs using the links from the previous post, but it is an awful lot to download and setup. So I thought a video might be appealing.

SharePoint and CRM

edhild — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:39:00 GMT

It isn't too often that I get to share publicly some of the work we do at the MTC for customers. Fortunately, the US Air Force let Microsoft turn a proof of concept I worked on into a case study. This POC was done a while ago - in fact you'll recognize some of it is on older technology than the current revisions. The solution was focused on providing a tracking system for requests for forces that come in from JFCOM. The current system (at the time) was simply Outlook and Emails. The action officers described spending 50% of their time sorting and searching through complicated email folder hierarchies. We proposed and build a system leveraging Microsoft CRM and SharePoint. On Microsoft's site, you can see a video about this solution, a demo of it online, and even more info of how this solution has generalized to tracking just about any task:

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/taskmanagement/default.mspx

By the way, they caked make up on me for the video...

Workaround for the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool ';' error

edhild — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:30:00 GMT

I was preparing for the upcoming conference and wanted to demo some of the new tools coming for SharePoint. Often I have heard the customer's IT department talk about finding rogue SharePoint installations and getting better metrics on how these servers were being used, so I thought I would spend some time with the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool. This tool is currently in Beta, but is publicly available through Microsoft's Connect site. It is basically a scanning solution that looks for SharePoint servers and dumps metrics about them into a SQL store with some nice SQL Reports. I installed the tool, only to get an error half-way through the scan. The error was something about a malformed SQL statement near a ';' and an ELSE statement. Unfortunately, I had nothing in the repository to even show as part of the demo. So the hunt began...

Looking through log files, I found the offending stored procedure to be dbo.SP_INSUPD_DEVICES_PORT_NUMBER. This proc was in the SATAssets database on my SQL server. If you modify this proc, you will notice that it builds a dynamic SQL string. In this string, one of the variables is not covered by two single quptes ''. So ...

IF('' + PORT_NUMBER + '' IS NOT NULL)

notice that I added the 2 ''. This proc and the SATAssets DB seem to be recreated each time you run a new scan after the initialization screen. Start the wizard, wait for the initialize prompt to go away, modify the proc, and then it works.

I also am a big fan of host headers in my dev environments. I noticed I also had to make sure that I had a web application that resolved the the server name on port 80 (or one of the ports it was looking for) to get my results.

I've also posted this workaround in the forums so hopefully you'll have some luck before the next drop happens on the Connect beta site.

Video: Building Presentations from SharePoint Site Content

edhild — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

First sorry for the long time away from posting. It was quite a busy fourth quarter. But welcome to 2008!

I put together a quick video blog of two demonstrations I show about how to automate the creation of PowerPoint presentations based on SharePoint site content. The first part of the demo shows how a Visual Studio Tools for Office add-in for PowerPoint can call SharePoint's web services to retrieve content and build slides. The second approach shows how this can be done completely server side by manipulating the new Open XML formatted files. Both demos usually get people excited; I hope you enjoy them. The code for these is available on Apress' web site since they are from my book: Pro SharePoint Solution Development. This book is mentioned a lot in the blog so it should be easy to find more info if you are interested. Sorry for the background noise in the video. The HVAC system here is running full strength on this cold day.

Also, I will be presenting at the upcoming SharePoint conference in Seattle in March. My topic will be "Enforce Governance by Provisioning Sites through Workflows" or something like that. Stop by and say hi. I may have a few books to hand out. http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/default.aspx

Just an update: Ian at wssdemo.com has hosted this video on a streaming server which has much better quality: http://xpstream.winisp.net/imorrish/generate_ppt_sharepoint.wmv

Video: Building Presentations from SharePoint Content

Book Review: Essential SharePoint 2007 by Scott Jamison and others

edhild — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:05:00 GMT

This book fills a niche that has long been lacking in the SharePoint space. Where most books are targeted exclusively to developers or administrators, this book takes a fresh approach and focuses on the business impact of the technology. This book contains all the things you never find in most SharePoint books. How to roll out the technology so that end-users will use it, how to construct the taxonomy, what planning needs to be performed to increase the likelihood of success. Scott's approach creates a book that any business decision maker will want to read whose organization is considering SharePoint. More impressively, this is a book that developers and administrators should read to gain insight on how to make sure their implementations won't fail. Scott wealth of experience working with customers and implementations shines through. Great work! Here is a link to amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-SharePoint-2007-Scott-Jamison/dp/0321421744/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4916604-4874568?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186149930&sr=8-1.

How To: Display browser enabled InfoPath forms in a web part supporting connections

edhild — Wed, 09 May 2007 04:10:00 GMT

Here is a little something from one of the chapters in the book (http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx)

With MOSS, there is the new Forms Services capability that allows you to take an InfoPath designed form and present it to the user as a web based form. When associated with a document library, the user can click New and the page opens displays the web-based form in a full page view of the browser. The user fills out the form and clicks save resulting in the xml being stored as an item in the library. Another feature that is well documented is that the Forms Server capability of MOSS also ships a ASP.NET server control (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa701078.aspx) that you can use in your own custom ASP.NET pages. This control is located in the Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.dll assembly. It is typically located at Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Bin, where Drive is the location where Office Forms Server 2007 or Office SharePoint Server 2007 is installed.

Upon closer examination of this ASP.NET server control, you may notice that it is in fact a web part. But this is not a web part that you would want to add to the SafeControls list and drag into a site as it expects to run in a full screen mode and will obliterate everything else on the page. I have had a vision that when viewing the items in the form library, a user should be able to open the form on the same page as the list of form instances. The solution is a simple one. I created a custom web part that wraps the out of the box control and adds support for connections. This way it can be dragged onto the AllItems.aspx page and connected to the view of the form library items. So a user can select a form, open it, edit the data, and save it back all in the same screen.

Here is the code form the web part.

Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts
Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls
Imports Microsoft.SharePoint
Imports Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls
Imports Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Controls
Imports System.Xml

Public Class FormViewWebPart
Inherits System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart

Const defaultXmlLocation = ""

    Private m_xmlLocation As String = defaultXmlLocation
    Private WithEvents m_xmlFormView As XmlFormView
    Private m_errorMessage As String = String.Empty

<WebBrowsable(), Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.User), WebDisplayName("XMLLocation"), WebDescription("URL of web-enabled InfoPath form")> _
 Public Property XMLLocation() As String
 Get
 Return m_xmlLocation
 End Get
 Set(ByVal value As String)
 m_xmlLocation = value
 End Set
 End Property

Protected Overrides Sub RenderContents(ByVal writer As System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter)
Me.EnsureChildControls()

If m_errorMessage <> String.Empty Then
 writer.Write(m_errorMessage)
 Else
 If (Me.m_xmlLocation.Length > 0) Then
 m_xmlFormView.XmlLocation = m_xmlLocation
 m_xmlFormView.DataBind()
 m_xmlFormView.Visible = True
 End If

            MyBase.RenderContents(writer)
        End If
    End Sub

    Protected Overrides Sub CreateChildControls()
        MyBase.CreateChildControls()
        m_xmlFormView = New XmlFormView()
        m_xmlFormView.Visible = False
        Me.Controls.Add(Me.m_xmlFormView)

m_xmlFormView.EditingStatus = XmlFormView.EditingState.Editing

End Sub

    Private Sub m_xmlFormView_Initialize(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Controls.InitializeEventArgs) Handles m_xmlFormView.Initialize
    End Sub

<ConnectionConsumer("XMLLocation")> _
 Public Sub GetConnectionInterface(ByVal providerPart As IWebPartField)
 Dim callback As FieldCallback = New FieldCallback(AddressOf Me.ReceiveField)
 providerPart.GetFieldValue(callback)
 End Sub

    Public Sub ReceiveField(ByVal field As Object)
        Me.EnsureChildControls()
        If (field IsNot Nothing) Then
            Me.m_xmlLocation = CType(field, String)
        End If

End Sub

End Class

How To: Connect web parts during site provisioning

edhild — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:46:00 GMT

If you have been following the How To's recently posted here, you will remember that I have a site definition that has the BDC Item web part on it. And I have a custom filter web part that pulls an ID out of the web's property bag. The only remaining item is how to get these two web parts connected during the creation of a site.

Since I used the SharePoint Solution Generator in the WSS Extensions, to capture the site definition, it gives me a hook into an event handler to do exactly that. In the Site Provisioning Handler folder of the VS.NET project it creates, there is a SiteProvisioning.cs file. Here is the code I added to the OnActivated event:

public void OnActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            SPWeb web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent;
            SPLimitedWebPartManager mgr = web.GetLimitedWebPartManager("default.aspx", PersonalizationScope.Shared);
            //filter web part
            System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart part1 = mgr.WebParts[2];
            //BDC Web Part
            System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart part2 = mgr.WebParts[3];

ConsumerConnectionPointCollection ccc = mgr.GetConsumerConnectionPoints(part2);
ProviderConnectionPointCollection ppp = mgr.GetProviderConnectionPoints(part1);

TransformableFilterValuesToEntityInstanceTransformer t = new TransformableFilterValuesToEntityInstanceTransformer();

            SPWebPartConnection conn = mgr.SPConnectWebParts(part1, ppp[0], part2, ccc[0], t);
            mgr.SPWebPartConnections.Add(conn);
        }

This code isn't that hard. The trick it to realize that since my custom web part is coded using the ASP.NET 2.0 style, I need to rely on the web part manager class to construct the connection. Based on the position of the web parts in my ONET.XML file, I could get a reference to each of them. Then just grabbed the consumer and provider connection points and built the connection. Since this connection requires the integer ID to be transformed into an entity instance, you need to provide an instance of the appropriate transformer when constructing the connection. In this case, the transformer is the TransformableFilterValuesToEntityInstanceTransformer class.

It is possible to debug this code. Just have Visual Studio attached before you provision the site. And your breakpoint inside this event will be fired.

SharePoint Book Update

edhild — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:27:00 GMT

Just chiming in on where we stand on the book. I just finished writing up the conclusion chapter. I've updated the TOC (http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx). The chapter is called "Realizing the Vision". In this chapter we spend some time on helping you identify if SharePoint is a fit for your custom application. And we look to the horizon to see VSTO "Orcas", LOBi for MOSS 2007, and the licensing of the Office UI. We also take a moment to review some helpful tools that will help you on your way to developing on the Office platform: SharePoint Solution Generator, WSS Extensions for VS.NET, and the ECM Tookit.

The InfoPath/Forms Services chapter is nearly done, so check back soon on that. I'm also half way through a smart document solution for Excel that allows users to capture list content from different sites so they can modify them in an offline scenario. This one requires VSTO 2005 for the document level project support so its developed with Office 2003. The solution still runs in Office 2007 of course. As soon as I am father along, I'll post some screen shots.

Plus updates from my upcoming conference. I am participating in two sesssions with Bob German. One is on features/templates/solutions and the other is on enhancing web content management. I'm sure a few goodies from my demos will make it up here shortly.

The unwritten work-arounds for using the SharePoint Solution Generator

edhild — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:48:00 GMT

So I have been working on a demonstration lately with the new SharePoint Solution Generator which is an included tool in the Windows SharePoint Services Extensions for Visual Studio. The promise of this tool is that you can point it at an existing site or list and get an equivalent SharePoint list or site definition. Notice I did not use the word "template". Templates are easy to create and that feature has been available even in SharePoint 2003. The difference is that a definition is maintained on the file system of the front-end web servers. Templates are just deltas of changes that have been made from the original definition. The importance of definitions is that they provide the possibility of changing and having the change ripple through existing instances. So this tool has quite the attraction as developers have been converting templates into definitions by hand for some time. In addition to this tool, this package includes new VS.NET project templates. You can get it at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=19f21e5e-b715-4f0c-b959-8c6dcbdc1057&DisplayLang=en.

Now there are many posts out there on the net that will walk you through how to use it. But very few of them will make this point. This tool must be run on the SharePoint server and it makes one HUGE assumption. The assumption is that you have a web application that is accessible from the url http://YOURCOMPUTERNAME. Now I know that most dev systems are setup that way. Mine is not. The only web app I have has a fully qualified name of portal.sample.com. So to get this tool to even run. You must first change the value of the COMPUTERNAME environment variable from a command window before launching the tool (from the same window). Something like:

Set COMPUTERNAME=portal.sample.com

and then start the tool from its executable.

This is quite tolerable, but unfortunately the VS.NET project templates make the same assumption. So to get them all to work as expected, you must also start VS.NET from the same command window after using the COMPUTERNAME variable.

Lastly, the capture site definition feature doesn't like to play nice with complicated sites or ones that have MOSS features enabled. I have often found myself setting up the site and then de-activating all of the features except Team Collaboration to get it to capture. Web part connections also seem to throw it off a bit. I haven't explored all the variables here, but thought I would at least pass on the advice.

Almost finished my book... Pro SharePoint Solution Development: Combining .NET, SharePoint, and Office 2007

edhild — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:49:00 GMT

So I have not been posting for quite some time. The major reason is that every moment outside of work is being put into this latest effort. The book is called "Pro SharePoint Solution Development: Combining .NET, SharePoint, and Office 2007". It is going to be published by Apress in the spring. I'm nearing the point where most of the first drafts are complete and people are seeing my name on Amazon.com, sooooo I figured it was time to start sharing.

The book is for developers and focuses on solution development using Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 SE. With these three major components, we are able to tackle some common problems facing information workers as they try to collaborate, use data effectively, etc. After a few overview chapters on each technology, the other chapters are self contained problems/solutions.

I have posted a page containing more details and the current state of the table of contents. I will use this blog to elaborate as we finish the book up: http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx

Come back for updates! Thanks -Ed

Generate a PowerPoint Presentation based on Site Data

edhild — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 04:45:00 GMT

Wow. Two posts in the same day. Hopefully that makes up for the long delay! If you couldn't tell I was heads down in a proof-of-concept, but I'm at least posting all the goodies :)

So this next piece isn't something I highly recommend. But it is great eye candy and becomes much more a possibility with Office 12 so I didn't mind putting it together. The concept is simple. A team site can be used for a group of users to come together to collaborate. As SharePoint admins, we recognize that there are specific reasons why the group comes together and this leads us to building site definitions/templates. As the users interact with the site, they are collecting data, completeing lists, filling out forms, etc. What if we could allow them to generate a briefing PowerPoint presentation based on live data collected in the site? After showing off this solution to just a few customers, I see that it resonates real well!

So the architecture here is simple. I built a PowerPoint file that is used as a template where the slides have placeholders for content that needs to be filled in. These placeholders are text strings like [@Date] and [@Title], etc. In my sample, I had two InfoPath forms. The first one had some general field data and the second one was an agenda whose items needed to be placed on a slide. To build the PowerPoint presentation, my solution automated PowerPoint on the server, opened the template, retrieved the files, filled in the data, and then saved it back to the site. There are lots of reasons why automating PowerPoint on the server is a bad idea and I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here. However, this idea is something that is going to gain momentum as Office 12 and its XML file format become a reality next year. I plan to put together an Office 12 version of this demo soon so stay tuned.

To even automate PowerPoint on the server, there are a lot of DCOM settings that you need to be concerned with. The following KB article should walk you through how you need to setup your environment: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288367/. Also make sure that when you install PowerPoint on the server, you do a custom install to get the interop assemblies installed. You will need to reference Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint. My code assumes the following namespaces are referenced:
Imports PowerPoint = Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint
Imports Office = Microsoft.Office.Core

Once configured, my solution executed the automation in a web part. The web part was just a simple button that when clicked performed the necessary actions. Here is most of the button click event with my comments inline. I selected VB.NET since the COM interop with Office would be easier to code.

Private Sub btnGenerate_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnGenerate.Click
        Dim app As PowerPoint.Application
        Dim pres As PowerPoint.Presentation
        Dim slide As PowerPoint.Slide
        Dim assistantOn As Boolean
        Dim siteUrl As String = Me.Context.Request.Url.ToString()
        siteUrl = siteUrl.Substring(0, siteUrl.IndexOf("default.aspx") - 1)

        'all of these were properties that allow me to retrieve the files or build links to docs in the site
        Dim template As String = siteUrl & pptTemplateFileStr
        Dim agenda As String = siteUrl & agendaFileStr
        Dim resultFileName As String = siteUrl & resultFileNameStr
        Dim securityUrl As String = siteUrl & securityViewStr
        Dim communicationUrl As String = siteUrl & communicationsViewStr
        Dim infoFile As String = siteUrl & infoFileStr
        Dim redirect As String = siteUrl & redirectStr

        Try
            'Start Powerpoint and make its window visible but minimized.
            app = New PowerPoint.Application
            app.Visible = True
            app.WindowState = PowerPoint.PpWindowState.ppWindowMinimized

            'Here I am figuring out which XML file I need to open. I am traversing the SPS object model to find the file
            Dim parts As String() = infoFileStr.Split("/")
            Dim web As SPWeb = SPControl.GetContextWeb(Me.Context)
            Dim sharedDocs As SPFolder = web.GetFolder(parts(0))
            Dim info As SPFile = sharedDocs.Files.Item(parts(1))
            Dim i As Byte() = info.OpenBinary()

                        'I know the file is XML so I get its string representation
            Dim iStr As String = System.Text.UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(i)
            'Create a new presentation based on the specified template.
            pres = app.Presentations.Open(template, , , True)
            If Not (pres Is Nothing) Then
                'retrieve the general info xml file
                Dim infoXml As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument
                infoXml.LoadXml(iStr)
                Dim namespaceManager As XmlNamespaceManager = New XmlNamespaceManager(infoXml.NameTable)
                namespaceManager.AddNamespace("my", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2005-11-03T22:41:52")
                'query here for general infomation
                Dim title As String = String.Empty
                Dim name As String = String.Empty
                Dim eta As DateTime = DateTime.Today

                Dim titleNode As XmlNode = infoXml.SelectSingleNode("//my:DV", namespaceManager)
                If (Not (titleNode Is Nothing)) Then title = titleNode.InnerText
                Dim nameNode As XmlNode = infoXml.SelectSingleNode("//my:DVName", namespaceManager)
                If (Not (nameNode Is Nothing)) Then name = nameNode.InnerText
                Dim etaNode As XmlNode = infoXml.SelectSingleNode("//my:ETA", namespaceManager)
                If (Not (etaNode Is Nothing)) Then eta = etaNode.InnerText

                'cleanup
                infoXml = Nothing
                info = Nothing
                i = Nothing
                iStr = Nothing

                'work with title slide. I have some helper code at the end that helps you find the names of shapes
                slide = pres.Slides.Item(1)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Text Box 14").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Date]", eta.ToShortDateString())
                slide.Shapes.Item("Text Box 14").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Title]", title)
                slide = Nothing

                'work with second slide. This slide had an additional challenge that I wanted to check every line of a bullet list
                slide = pres.Slides.Item(2)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Date]", eta.ToShortDateString())
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Title]", title)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 3").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Name]", name)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 3").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Date]", eta.ToShortDateString())
                Dim lineText As PowerPoint.TextRange
                For Each lineText In slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 7").TextFrame.TextRange.Lines
                    lineText.Replace("[@Name]", name)
                Next

slide = Nothing

                'work with third slide. This was the agenda section
                Dim bodyText As String = String.Empty
                slide = pres.Slides.Item(3)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Date]", eta.ToShortDateString())
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Title]", title)
                parts = agendaFileStr.Split("/")
                Dim templates As SPFolder = web.GetFolder(parts(0))
                info = templates.Files.Item(parts(1))
                i = info.OpenBinary()
                iStr = System.Text.UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(i)

                Dim agendaXml As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument
                agendaXml.LoadXml(iStr)
                namespaceManager = New XmlNamespaceManager(agendaXml.NameTable)
                namespaceManager.AddNamespace("mtg", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/sample/MeetingAgenda")
                'place each agenda item into the body text of the shape
                Dim nodes As XmlNodeList = agendaXml.SelectNodes("//mtg:agendaItems/mtg:agenda", namespaceManager)
                Dim nodeItem As XmlNode
                For Each nodeItem In nodes
                    Dim subject As String = nodeItem("mtg:subject").InnerText
                    Dim duration As String = nodeItem("mtg:duration").InnerText
                    bodyText = bodyText & duration & Chr(9) & subject & vbCrLf
                Next
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 3").TextFrame.TextRange.Text = bodyText
                slide = Nothing
                agendaXml = Nothing
                info = Nothing
                i = Nothing
                iStr = Nothing

                'work with fourth slide. This slide had some graphics that I wanted to change the color of.
                'sort of a score card approach where I changed the color from green to yellow and hyperlinked the text
                slide = pres.Slides.Item(4)
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Date]", eta.ToShortDateString())
                slide.Shapes.Item("Rectangle 2").TextFrame.TextRange.Replace("[@Title]", title)
                slide.Shapes("AutoShape 4").Fill.ForeColor.RGB = 65535
                slide.Shapes("AutoShape 9").Fill.ForeColor.RGB = 65535
                slide.Shapes.Item("Text Box 13").TextFrame.TextRange.ActionSettings(PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick).Hyperlink.Address = securityUrl
                slide.Shapes.Item("Text Box 18").TextFrame.TextRange.ActionSettings(PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick).Hyperlink.Address = communicationUrl

slide = Nothing

'save to document library
 pres.SaveAs(resultFileName)
 endStr = "Completed. You presentation is located <a href='" & redirect & "'>here</a>."
 Me.btnGenerate.Visible = False

End If

        Catch ex As Exception
            Me.errorStr = errorStr & ex.Message & ex.StackTrace
        Finally
            'Close the presentation without saving changes and quit PowerPoint.
            If Not (pres Is Nothing) Then
                pres.Saved = True
                pres.Close()
                pres = Nothing
            End If
            If Not (app Is Nothing) Then
                app.Quit()
                app = Nothing
            End If
            GC.Collect()
        End Try

End Sub

This is by now means a production solution. But it gets a lot of jaws dropping in the audience. I used the following code during the development of the web part to find out what shapes were on a given slide:

slide = pres.Slides.Item(4)
Dim shape As PowerPoint.Shape
For Each shape In slide.Shapes
 errorStr = errorStr & shape.Name
 If (shape.HasTextFrame) Then errorStr = errorStr & " " & shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Runs(1, -1).Text
 errorStr = errorStr & " "
Next

My first version of the code used an XMLUrlResolver to load the XML files from the Url. I liked this approach and it worked in my dev environment. However, the demo environment was locked down a bit more so I went with opening the file from the SharePoint object model.

'setup credentials for requesting infopath xml files
Dim resolver As XmlUrlResolver = New XmlUrlResolver
resolver.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
infoXml.XmlResolver = resolver
infoXml.Load(infoFile)

Display InfoPath form data in the XML web part

edhild — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 04:35:00 GMT

I recently was working on a proof-of-concept where we wanted a team site to display on the default.aspx page some of the data that existed in an InfoPath form. This data needed to be seen by everyone without requiring them to open up the form file. We also wanted to make sure that if the data in the InfoPath form changed, the site reflected that. You might think that we broke down and wrote some custom code. You would of course be wrong. It turns out that we could easily leverage the out-of-the-box XML web part!

The XML web part is pretty simple to use. For my site, I simply used the XML Link property and pointed it to the saved InfoPath form "shared documents/test2.xml". Once connected to the file, it is a rather simple XSLT that can be used to retrieve the data. Here is my XSLT:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:s0="http://www.sourcecode.co.za/webservices/InfoPathService" xmlns:dfs="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/dataFormSolution" xmlns:mime="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/mime/" xmlns:tm="http://microsoft.com/wsdl/mime/textMatching/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:http="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/http/" xmlns:ns1="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:my="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/myXSD/2005-11-03T22:41:52" xmlns:xd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003" xml:lang="en-us" >
<xsl:output method="html"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
Title: <xsl:value-of select='//my:DV' /> 
Date of Visit: <xsl:value-of select='//my:ETA' /> 
City: <xsl:value-of select='//my:City' /> 
Country: <xsl:value-of select='//my:Country' /> 
Trip Code: <xsl:value-of select='//my:TripCode' /> 
WPR: <xsl:value-of select='//my:WPR' />

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

The result is a few properties our of the InfoPath form with tags after each item! Have fun.

Relationships between site directory, search, and WSS team sites

edhild — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 18:22:00 GMT

I was asked recently if there was a web part in SharePoint that would display all the team sites where the current user was a member. My immediate push back was what did it mean to be a member? I began down a path investigating the relationship between team sites, the site directory, and search as well as some custom dev for the above web part. I just thought I would record some interesting observations:

For reasons that I'll explain a bit later, I first wanted to make sure that my WSS team sites were in the search catalog of my SharePoint portal. You should know that I have an environment where there were WSS team sites in a virtual server that was separate from the SPS implementation. This turned out to be a good thing as it opened my eyes to some important details. Almost everyone knows that when you run the "Create Site" link from the Site Directory of a SPS Portal, you get a checkbox to include the site in the site directory as well as a checkbox for the team site to be included in search results. It is IMPORTANT to realize that these are two separate requests. Most of us run as administrators and don't see the approval that is required behind the scenes for both of these actions. I had even a bigger dilemma, my WSS sites were in another virtual server. How could I get these team sites in the search catalog?

So you might think that you would just add a new content source. You of course would be wrong. If you add the team site as a web site content source, the index search engine wouldn't be aware that it was a WSS site and would not have access to features like being security aware. The trick here is in the admin of the portal, in the search settings and index content portion, there is a link to "manage crawls of site directory". What is quite interesting is that this admin area really has nothing to do the site directory of the SPS portal. This admin area shows you the WSS sites that users have created where the checkbox to include in search results has been selected. From here, I could add my WSS sites in the other virtual server.

So why did I dive into search. Well to meet the request of displaying all the team sites where a user has access, I could think of 3 different approaches: query the database, enumerate the object model, or use the search catalog. Querying the database would be easy, but I would be opening pandora's box. Who knows what a service pack might do... Plus creating a security aware list would be more difficult. Enumerating the object model would be easy to code and security aware, but execution time would be a problem. Especially if the customer came back and said that they wanted a list that included subsites as well as top-level sites. Using the search catalog gives me a security aware data store (users only get search result items that have access to) that I can query rather quickly. I threw together a QueryTester web part that uses the QueryProvider class to execute any search query I give it (this.Text). Here are some of the highlights of that web part's code:

using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.Search;
...

try
   {
    if (this.Text != String.Empty)
    {
     PortalContext context = PortalApplication.GetContext();
     query = new QueryProvider(context.SearchApplicationName);
     DataSet results = query.Execute(this.Text);
     grid = new DataGrid();
     grid.DataSource = results;
     grid.DataBind();
     this.Controls.Add(grid);
    }
    base.RenderWebPart(output);
   }

So the following query would return the list of all team sites and their subsites that the user has read access to:

SELECT "DAV:contentclass", "DAV:displayname", "DAV:href"
FROM Non_Portal_Content..SCOPE()
WHERE ("DAV:contentclass"='STS_Site' OR "DAV:contentclass"='STS_Web')

So now I will have to go back to my SPS Automation article and add code to include the add to search and site directory actions!

Secure crawls of Lotus Notes with SharePoint

edhild — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 06:01:00 GMT

I recently had to prove SharePoint's ability to search Lotus Notes databases including honoring security. This meant that a user who did not have access to the Notes database should not see search result items in SharePoint. After having to dig through several how-to guides, knowledge base articles, and hotfixes, I finally got the solution to work and thought that I would post my configuration and include a lot of screen shots that I thought were lacking in other materials.

http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/articles/473060.aspx