Eric Kraus' SharePoint/.NET Blog

Packing up My Documents: A PowerShell Story

ekraus — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:31:25 GMT

I am frequently asked by colleagues and customers for a dump of all of my SharePoint content (presentations, white papers, etc.) While I continue to add files like these to my hard drive in various different locations, it has started to take me a while to aggregate them all forward. It dawned on me that this need not be a half an hour exercise of locating documents.

Bing! PowerShell

Thanks to another colleagues blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/daiken/archive/2007/02/12/compress-files-with-windows-powershell-then-package-a-windows-vista-sidebar-gadget.aspx

I created a few functions and added them to my PowerShell module that loads with my profile. Now it’s as simple as:

Get-ChildItem -path c: -filter *sharepoint* -recurse | create-zip "c:\sharepoint.zip"

#Special Thanks to:
# http://blogs.msdn.com/daiken/archive/2007/02/12/compress-files-with-windows-powershell-then-package-a-windows-vista-sidebar-gadget.aspx

# Create a new zip file from pipeline
function Create-Zip()
{
    param
    (
        [string]$zipFile
    );

    New-Zip -zipfileName $zipFile
    $zip = Get-Zip -zipfileName $zipFile

    #loop through files in pipeline
    foreach($file in $input)
    {
        #add file to zip and sleep 1/2 second
        $zip.CopyHere($file.FullName)
        Start-sleep -milliseconds 500
    }

}

#create a new zip file
function New-Zip
{
    param([string]$zipfilename)
    set-content $zipfilename ("PK" + [char]5 + [char]6 + ("$([char]0)" * 18))
    (dir $zipfilename).IsReadOnly = $false
}

#get the zip file
function Get-Zip
{
    param([string]$zipfilename)
    if(test-path($zipfilename))
    {
        $shellApplication = new-object -com shell.application
        $zipFullFilename = (get-childitem $zipfilename).FullName
        $shellApplication.NameSpace($zipFullFilename)
    }
}

Twitter Basics

ekraus — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:56:55 GMT

Twitter for those who just want to consume information…

By now most of the world has at least heard of Twitter. For those who aren’t already using it, I imagine the vast majority have taken a stance of “Why would anyone care when I go to the bathroom?” Or, “Not another web site I need to sign up for…”

Well, as an avid Twitter user, I couldn’t agree more. However, there is a RIDUCULOUS amount of quality information out on Twitter to consume, information that doesn’t require you to create an account to retrieve. Albeit, creating one will bring you added value… The real tricks are finding the right people and filtering out all of the garbage.

Here are some tips that have helped me find great value in this tool:

Finding Information

-If you are looking for people to follow, check out http://twibes.com It’s a collection of “opt-in” groups of people that usually Twitter about a common topic. The site gives you an aggregated view of what these people are saying. It’s an easy way to find people that are consistently providing good content on a subject. Once you find a few people, you can go to a person’s Twitter page (http://twitter.com/<username>) and see who he/she is following. No guarantee, but good chance they are following other quality people.

“SharePoint” group on Twibes

-If you are just looking for some content, check out http://topsy.com. It’s a search engine crawling only Twitter messages with links, based on popularity.

Search for “sharepoint” on Topsy

-While I don’t like the Twitter web site itself, I don’t mind Twitter search. http://search.twitter.com The biggest benefit here is the available RSS feed.

Twitter Search

How to consume?

While visiting these sites gives you an easy way to access this information without even creating an account, it may not be as convenient as other methods. After you find people to follow or search criteria from these sites, you will notice that most provide an RSS feed for your query. Add that RSS feed to Internet Explorer, Outlook 2007, or other RSS reader.

-Another great site is http://www.peoplebrowsr.com/ It’s basically TweetDeck (see below) as a website. While still a bit buggy in beta, it’s a great way to configure search queries like in TweetDeck without creating an account or downloading a client application.

PeopleBrowsr

If you decide to contribute, some additional tips:

-Sign up for an account on Twitter.com site and then close your browser. The Twitter web application is horrible and you’ll never find value using the website.

-Download TweetDeck After you set it up, add a couple search columns based on what information you are looking for.

My TweetDeck

-Network! “RT” (re-tweet) messages that you find useful. It exposes you to the author. If the author thinks you provide good content, he/she will follow you. The more people that follow you, the more that will see the messages you contribute. This is useful when you are looking to post a question.

I look at Twitter as a personal AP wire. There’s a lot of information traveling by, but with a few custom searches/filters, I can grab some really good info. I spend a few minutes every night reading what the world is saying about SharePoint, PowerShell, Microsoft, and Kate Moss. Just kidding about Kate Moss…but for a while I did get some garbage float in on my “MOSS or WSS” search.

Additionally, Twitter has become an informal support forum for questions like, “Has anyone seen this error before….” I usually get a response or two within 5 minutes.

Even if you never contribute, Twitter is an excellent source of “what’s going on in the world regarding ____ “ I encourage you to check it out. Just don’t try to read everything…

PowerShell Shortcuts

ekraus — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:01:22 GMT

I’m all about shortcuts when it comes to development and there’s no exception for PowerShell.

Browsing around this morning, I found two useful shortcuts that I didn’t know existed.

F7 “History”- Pressing the F7 key will show a dialog window in PowerShell with a list of commands from your history. You can also access this list by using the cmdlet “Get-History” but I find the dialog WAY more easy than the cmdlet or using the Up arrow key.

F8 “Filtered Commands” - Pressing the F8 key is much like using the Up arrow key to scroll backwards through your list of commands; however, it allows you to filter the list of commands. Here’s an example of a list of commands:

1. cls
2. Write-Host “Starting my example”
3. cls
4. Write-Output “This is fun”
5. cls
6. Write-Warning –message “Uh oh, too much fun”
7. cls
8. Write-Host “Ending my example”

The way to efficiently use F8, is for command line 6, type only: “write” and then press F8 several times. It will cycle through all of your previous commands, but only those that started with “write” (lines 2, 4, and 6).

Cool: - you will also notice that the cursor is positioned at the end of your filter, so you can easily move it ahead or behind and do a Ctrl + End to delete the rest of the command line to continue writing.

SharePoint Administration with PowerShell

ekraus — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:43:23 GMT

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 presentations from Eric Kraus.

Disabling Enterprise Feature Buttons

ekraus — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:13:11 GMT

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 concept again and thought that if disabling the feature wasn’t possible, at least I could hide the button on the page.

So, I did a view source on the page and pulled the control ID (for which for 99% of the SharePoint sites out there will be the same). Then, I added a simple style to the application.master page in “12 Hive\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS” which serves ManageFeatures.aspx page.

<script language=”javascript”>
     var siteCollectionFeatureButton = ‘ctl00_PlaceHolderMain_featact_rptrFeatureList_ctl03_btnActivate’;

     var siteFeatureButton = ‘ctl00_PlaceHolderMain_featact_rptrFeatureList_ctl17_btnActivate’;

     var featureButton = document.getElementById(siteCollectionFeatureButton);
     featureButton.style.visibility = “hidden”;

     featureButton = document.getElementById(siteFeatureButton);
     featureButton.style.visibility = “hidden”;
</script>

Whether hiding to prevent activation or deactivation, both will still be possible via object model and stsadm.exe

SharePoint + PowerShell Memory Leak

ekraus — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:04:59 GMT

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 important note for anyone using PowerShell with the SharePoint object model. A memory leak can occur on EVERY object if the objects are referenced across several “sentences” or pipelines.

e.g.

PS>   $site = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite(“http://contoso”)
PS>   $site.Title
PS>   $site.Dispose()

The example above would still cause some memory to leak because the SPSite object is referenced on several pipelines (threads) and lost along the way.

Zach’s post can be found here with a good work around: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/02/11/sharepoint-and-powershell-knowledge.aspx

IMPORTANT:

I did confirm today that the issue only pertains to scripts executed across multiple threads/pipelines in the shell. This means that writing your commands in functions, script files, modules, etc. are all still recommended best practices as they are executed from the shell in a single sentence….thus resulting in a single pipeline (thread).

e.g.

PS> Get-SPSiteTitle(“http://contoso”)

Filter SharePoint Event Log Entries

ekraus — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:52:07 GMT

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 the last 20 entries written to the event log.

The cool thing is that these objects are piped to a gridview. From there, I can apply additional filtering, like: “Show me all events where ‘user’ is in the message.”

get-eventlog –logname Application –source ‘*sharepoint*’ –newest 20 | out-gridview

Wanna take your event log entries home with you? Try this out: instead of sending the entries through the pipeline to the gridview, send them to a CSV file:

get-eventlog –logname Application –source ‘*sharepoint*’ | export-csv c:\eventlog.csv

101 Uses for PowerShell

ekraus — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:11:00 GMT

I’ve had a request to consolidate all of my little script examples into a single blog post. While I’m not starting out with all 101 examples, I will continually update this post with scripts ideas and examples. Enjoy. Active Directory Using Quest’s FREE...(read more)

Feature Development Help From PowerShell

ekraus — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:46:47 GMT

In my last post, I wrote about using WSPBuilder to automate the process of creating the manifest.xml and solution.ddf files. But what about the elements.xml file in your feature? For a lot of my customers doing WCM solutions on MOSS, they...(read more)

Automating your SharePoint Development with PowerShell

ekraus — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:43:16 GMT

Developing in SharePoint is much like preparing a large holiday meal. It involves strict ingredients for the recipes, which must be prepared in the correct order using the finite tools you have in your kitchen. No matter how many times you...(read more)

Twin Cities SharePoint Camp: SharePoint+OBA

ekraus — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:09:56 GMT

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....(read more)

More OBA Resources

ekraus — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:50:28 GMT

Happy Friday. As I’m diving deeper and deeper into OBA development and Office integration, I’m discovering more and more how much information actually IS out there on this stuff…just not as surfaced as say, “SharePoint development”. With the economy...(read more)

A look into PowerShell 2.0 CTP3 Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE)

ekraus — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:57:04 GMT

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...(read more)

Customizing the Ribbon in Office 2007 Applications

ekraus — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:40:51 GMT

One of the great new features in the Office 2007 application suite is the addition of the Office Ribbon. While the ribbon provides most commonly used functions in an easy to navigate control, the true power of the ribbon comes in the ability for...(read more)

SharePoint on the iPhone

ekraus — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:32:45 GMT

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...(read more)