Adventure Girl

Application Pool Identity Character Limit

Jessica Gruber — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 14:34:00 GMT

So, today, my customer (who we'll call Tom) was struggling (he thinks it was a heroic struggle) with extending a virtual server for WSS. He created a user with a really long username to use as an application pool identity. When he tried to extend the virtual server, he got an error that said "User or group [domain]\[username] is unknown". Now, he could see that the user existed as a domain account and that domain account did have access to the local machine. So what was the issue?

We (this is when I joined the struggle) tried all sorts of things. We tried:

creating a new username of similar length, thinking we'd done something wonky
having a shorter username, which worked provisionally but we didn't know why

In order to prove the "having a shorter username" idea, we counted letters in various test usernames and found that 20 characters seemed to be the limit. So we tried the following two names:

svc_SPSProjectsAppPo (which is weird, but only has 20 characters and originally had an "ol" at the end)
svc_SPSProjectsAppPoo (which is equally weird, but we were only trying to prove a point)

When we tried to create the second username, we got an error saying that the username already existed. Hmmm.

Then we noticed the pre-Windows 2000 user logon name, which appears to have a limit of 20 characters, and for those two usernames, the pre-Windows 2000 user logon names were the same. More hmmm.

We decided, after more heroic struggling, that the application pool identity appears not to use the actual username as you set it up in Active Directory but instead the pre-Windows 2000 user logon name.

Now this is only based on our tests, and we were just trying to get it to work, so it's possible we didn't cover every angle. Anyone else seen this sort of thing?

Office 12 to include Save To PDF command

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:53:00 GMT

Maybe everybody else has already heard this. I read about it in The Register and followed the link to the Microsoft Press Release. Here's what Steven Sinofsy said about it:

Today we demonstrated support in Office “12” that will enable customers to save their work as a PDF file by simply using the Save As command from within an Office program, such as Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Access, Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft Office Publisher or Microsoft Office Visio. It is just that simple – instead of printing the document and faxing it, or overnight-mailing it, customers can save a PDF and electronically distribute a read-only, “as-printed” representation of the document.

I'm quite excited about this, in a terribly nerdy way, because this is one of the most common requests I hear, especially in relation to InfoPath forms. So, yay!

WSS SP2 is available from the Microsoft Download Centre

Jessica Gruber — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 12:35:00 GMT

Such good news! Here's some information that Iyaz put together that I'd like to repeat for you...

The WSS SP 2 release has substantial supportability improvements including,

Support for running on 64-bit machines in 32-bit emulation mode
Support for Reverse Proxy and Alternate URL support
Support for IP Bound virtual servers
Support for off-box SSL termination
Support for SQL Server 2005
Support for ASP.NET 2.0

Although SPS SP1/RTM will be able to run on top of WSS SP2, there is restricted support for the "shared" functionality (the support improvements above) that is added in SP2 for SPS and WSS until SPS SP2 ships (hopefully soon!). This information is explained in KB http://support.microsoft.com/?id=887624 (description of WSS SP 2).

A couple of useful KB articles,

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=887624 Description of WSS SP 2
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=906336 WSS SP 2 KB article listing all of the fixes
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=875358 Guidance for deploying WSS SP 2 including the new SP 2 version number
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=832769 will be updated to reflect that SP 2 now enables Kerberos out of box. The one main addition in the article is how to switch back to NTLM if you accidentally chose Kerberos and it was not what you wanted. If you chose Kerberos and did not configure the SPN then your users will not be able to authenticate to the SharePoint site.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=894903 when switching a WSS virtual server from ASP.NET 1.0 to ASP.NET 2.0 you need to run an stsadm.exe operation to update web.config for new ASP.NET 2.0 security settings

The Windows SharePoint Services Administration Guide should also be updated . Make sure to download the latest copy so that you have instructions for using the new WSS SP 2 feature functionality.

CHM build, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a637eff6-8224-4b19-a6a4-3e33fa13d230&DisplayLang=en
Live version on TechNet, http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/default.mspx

Windows SharePoint Services SP 2 will also ship in Windows Server R2. Additional documentation about the new SP 2 features is included in this walkthrough document, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=abba20f2-3625-4c9c-a412-ab9bbebdb5e8&displaylang=en.

Mart Muller's Checklist for interviews with System Administrators

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:42:00 GMT

I'm currently in the process of helping a global company design their portal architecture. I must confess, however, that infrastructure / system admin stuff is not my forte, so I was a bit nervous about talking to those people about their existing environment. Happily I found this post from Mart Muller that provides a great list of appropriate issues to cover. Thanks, Mart!

Custom Menus (not just Menu Items) in SharePoint

Jessica Gruber — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:13:00 GMT

MSDN told us how to Customize the Shortcut Menu for List Items

Jim Duncan showed us how to move navigation elements (like Documents and Lists and Site Settings) to the Modify Shared Page menu

Ryan Rogers figured out how to delete context menu items

Mark Bower modified the original idea and gave us an example of adding context menu items with a hidden web part (no need for CustomJS or changes to ONET.XML)

But I wanted to take it just a bit further. I wanted a new menu altogether for my own type of data from an external source. And I wanted it to look just like a SharePoint context menu. So, standing on the shoulders of these giants, I came up with this.

Walk with me, if you will, through my process...

On any list's AllItems.aspx page (which is really the functionality we're trying to recreate), each item in the list has a table wrapped around the link to the item itself. The table OnMouseOver event calls the OnItem function (in ows.js) and the link OnFocus event calls the OnLink function. OnLink calls OnItem so I'll focus on OnItem.

You can open ows.js and check out the whole OnItem function if you'd like, but here are the bits that interested me:

    currentItemID = itemTable.ItemId;

    var createCtx = new Function("setupMenuContext(" + itemTable.CTXName + ");");
    createCtx();
    var ctx = currentCtx; <

The table ItemId is the unique identifier for the list item and allows for menu commands to be applied to each item in the list individually. Easy enough to understand.

The next thing I needed to figure out was "What the heck is ctx?" So, in a technologically advanced move, I viewed the source of the AllItems.aspx page and found this:

    ctx = new ContextInfo();
    ctx.listBaseType = 0;
    ctx.listTemplate = 107;
    ctx.listName = "{E3466FBA-8748-44A6-AC28-6581AC69152C}";
    ctx.listUrlDir = "Lists/Tasks";
    ctx.HttpPath = "http://192.168.1.100/sites/Sample/contextmenu/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109";
    ctx.HttpRoot = "http://192.168.1.100/sites/Sample/contextmenu";
    ctx.imagesPath = "/_layouts/images/";
    ctx.PortalUrl = "/";
    if (ctx.PortalUrl == "") ctx.PortalUrl = null;
    ctx.displayFormUrl = "http://192.168.1.100/sites/Sample/contextmenu/Lists/Tasks/DispForm.aspx";
    ctx.editFormUrl = "http://192.168.1.100/sites/Sample/contextmenu/Lists/Tasks/EditForm.aspx";
    ctx.isWebEditorPreview = 0;
    ctx.ctxId = 1;

    ctx1 = ctx;

The ContextInfo object is defined in ows.js as well and initializes all the values to null. I'll come back to this in a bit.

Now, back to OnItem -- the other interesting bit is this:

itemTable.onclick = CreateMenu;

which naturally lead me to the CreateMenu function. Again, you can check the whole function out at your leisure, but the salient points are:

    var ctx = currentCtx;
    [other bits of code here]
    if (ctx.isVersions)
        AddVersionMenuItems(m, ctx);
    else if (ctx.listBaseType == BASETYPE_DOCUMENT_LIBRARY)
        AddDocLibMenuItems(m, ctx);
    else if (ctx.listTemplate == LISTTEMPLATE_MEETINGS)
        AddMeetingMenuItems(m, ctx);
    else
        AddListMenuItems(m, ctx);

In this code you can see the different types of context menus that SharePoint creates, and that the appropriate menu is identified by a property of the ContextInfo object that I mentioned earlier.

So that's how it's all tied together. Whew! That was a lot of background information!

For my implementation, I wanted a completely new menu. Following the MSDN article, I created a custom javascript file called custom_ows.js. In that file I added the ContextInfo object and the CreateMenu function to extend them for my purposes. In the ContextInfo object I added two new properties called Sample_Context and Sample_Page. In the CreateMenu function I added a new IF statement:

if (ctx.listBaseType == -1)
AddSampleMenuItems(m, ctx)

The point of creating this new context menu was to be able to launch a new browser window depending on item-specific information. On an AllItems.aspx page there is only ever one ContextInfo object, but I needed at least two because I had different types of items (processes and tasks) in one list. So, my AddSampleMenuItems function looked like this:

function AddSampleMenuItems(m, ctx)
{
    //Added a new function as called from extended CreateMenu function to add sample-specific menu options

    //need these three variables to create a new menu option
    var strDisplayText = "";
    var strAction = "";
    var strImagePath = "/_layouts/images/Sample/sample.jpg";

    //check the Sample_Context to determine what the display text should be
    if (ctx.Sample_Context == "SampleProcessesCTX")
        strDisplayText = "Open Process";
    else if (ctx.Sample_Context == "SampleTasksCTX")
        strDisplayText = "Open Task";

    //set the action to open a new window with the context-specific URL
    //because the action is a javascript call itself, in order to get the correct context object, we have to format
    //the action string with the correct object name which is in ctx.Sample_Context
    strAction = "window.open('_layouts/1033/Sample/'+" + ctx.Sample_Context + ".Sample_Page+'.aspx?ItemID='+currentItemID, '_blank');";

    // Add our new menu item
    CAMOpt(m, strDisplayText, strAction, strImagePath);

    // add a separator to the menu
    CAMSep(m);
}

In this code you can see that I checked the ContextInfo object's Sample_Context value and changed the menu display text accordingly. I then created the menu action to open the appropriate page with query string data. This was mildly tricky because I need to make sure I was referring to the correct ContextInfo object so that the javascript window.open command would be formatted correctly.

Just a few more bits to go...

My user control (which I hosted in a SmartPart) had two ContextInfo objects:

    <SCRIPT>
    //have to set up a context object for each different type of context menu
    SampleProcessesCTX = new ContextInfo();
    SampleProcessesCTX.listBaseType = -1;
    SampleProcessesCTX.Sample_Context = "SampleProcessesCTX";
    SampleProcessesCTX.Sample_Page = "processes";
    SampleProcessesCTX.HttpPath = ""; //this is necessary for the "IsContextSet" function, which checks that this value is not null
    SampleProcessesCTX.imagesPath = "/_layouts/images/";
    SampleProcessesCTX.ctxId = 13;

    SampleTasksCTX = new ContextInfo();
    SampleTasksCTX.listBaseType = -1;
    SampleTasksCTX.Sample_Context = "SampleTasksCTX";
    SampleTasksCTX.Sample_Page = "tasks";
    SampleTasksCTX.HttpPath = ""; //this is necessary for the "IsContextSet" function, which checks that this value is not null
    SampleTasksCTX.imagesPath = "/_layouts/images/";
    SampleTasksCTX.ctxId = 14;
    </SCRIPT>

Important points about the ContextInfo object:

I used .listBaseType = -1 because .listBaseType refers to the BaseTypes in ONET.XML and I figured SharePoint would never have a BaseType with an ID of -1; also because generally -1 means "absence of" and in this case there is an absence of a base list type!

You have to set .HttpPath to "" (or anything not null) because the IsContextSet function checks this value for its non-null-ness.

You have to include .imagesPath to get the arrow in the drop-down list. If this is missing, the menu just doesn't work.

You may think that .Sample_Context seems rather self-relating -- well, it is! That's what AddSampleMenuItems uses to know which ContextInfo object to use. It also has to be unique so it can be used to determine which context the menu is for.

I confess I don't know what .ctxID is for, but it seems important!

The user control also rendered a datagrid that looked like this:

<asp:DataGrid id="DataGrid1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False">
        <Columns>
            <asp:TemplateColumn HeaderText="Process">
                <ItemTemplate>
                    
                    <table height="100%" cellspacing="0" class="ms-unselectedtitle"
                        onmouseover="OnItem(this)"
                        CTXName="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ItemContext")%>"
                        ItemId="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ItemID")%>" MsoPnlId="data">
                        <tr>
                            <td width="100%" class="ms-vb">
                                <%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "ItemName")%>
                            </td>
                            <td><img src="/_layouts/images/blank.gif" width="13" style="visibility: hidden" alt=""/></td>
                        </tr>
                    </table>
                </ItemTemplate>
            </asp:TemplateColumn>
            <asp:BoundColumn DataField="Information" HeaderText="Information"></asp:BoundColumn>
        </Columns>
    </asp:DataGrid>

Note that the item wrapping table must include the onmouseover event and attributes called CTXName and ItemId (those are case-sensitive). Finally I created two .aspx pages (I just copied settings.aspx) and put them in everybody's favourite place: c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\60\template\layouts\1033\Sample.

Here's what it looked like when I was done:

And just so you can see that there is a different menu for a task than for a process...

So, there you go! Enjoy!

The SharePoint Utility Suite, Release 2.0 is now ready for download

Jessica Gruber — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 20:07:00 GMT

"The purpose of the SharePoint Utility Suite is to provide a packaged collection of Tools and Utilities showcasing the rich Object Model that is delivered with the SharePoint Product and Technologies SDK (which includes Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003). This package includes code and tool examples that SharePoint Developers and SharePoint Administrators might find useful."

Go ahead! Download it! You know you want to!

Web part gallery taking forever to display?

Jessica Gruber — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:22:00 GMT

Well mine was, and it was getting embarrassing trying to explain to the customer why it was running so slowly on my VPC when I really didn't know the answer!

But then I found this post on the very subject by good old Daniel, and now everything is copacetic. Yay!

InfoPath Forms Server

Jessica Gruber — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 09:57:00 GMT

Very exciting InfoPath news!

Nearly every customer I've been to has liked the *idea* of InfoPath but has been disappointed with the implementation. They are all concerned about the fact that anyone who uses InfoPath, either as a designer or a user, has to have the product installed on their machine.

On Friday at the Worldwide Partners Conference, there was a tantalising peek at an InfoPath Forms Server. Woo-hoo! Here's a snippet from the article in BetaNews:

For a moment, Microsoft lifted the tarp that shrouds Office 12 in secrecy at its Worldwide Partner Conference on Friday. Microsoft information worker vice president Chris Capossela demonstrated what Microsoft Watch believes to be the upcoming InfoPath Forms Server.

During the demonstration, Capossela showed attendees how Office users can use the software to deliver server-based forms using a Web browser -- without a client being installed.

Can't wait to see what happens! I reckon more and more info will be coming out in the months leading up to the PDC. I *so* wish I could be there!

Whew, that's done!

Jessica Gruber — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 08:01:00 GMT

Just finished my first-ever TechEd presentation. I didn't fall off the stage and talked generally about the advertised topic, so I guess it went okay!

Hopefully the attendees got the information they needed. Even more hopefully their appetites have been whet for all the upcoming Office 12 file format stuff!

Thanks to everyone who attended and offered helpful comments in your feedback. Hope to see you again next year!

Live, from TechEd 2005!

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 10:56:00 GMT

So, it has begun. One of the best parts of TechEd (even beyond the keynote, the breakout sessions, the hands-on-labs, the chalk-and-talks, and the free bottled watered) is meeting people you may know by reputation or blog links, but not in real life.

Last night I was invited, along with my colleague Mark Bower, to go along on a boat trip on the canals of Amsterdam with Microsofties, customers and partners from Norway. There we met Mads (pronounced like mozzarella without the -arella) Nissen, a fellow SharePoint blogger. We talked nerdy SharePoint-y and Office-y stuff for a while, but then went out for beers and discussed the finer points of geekdom, like seeing / meeting people who are celebrities even if only within our small community. Between us we decided there needed to be a different word for those people besides celebrities, because no matter how often he presents, Don Box is not in the same sphere as Robbie Williams. Mads came up with the word "v-celeb". Check out his blog for a further explanation (and for some good info on SharePoint, Office and .net development!)

SharePoint and ASP.NET 2.0

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 09:20:00 GMT

A colleague just asked me if I could provide a pointer to any information regarding the interaction / integration between the current version of SharePoint and the new version of ASP.NET. I found an post from Mike Fitzmaurice on the very subject. Many of you will have already read that post (lots of people have trackbacks to it) but it never hurts to reiterate important points, I reckon!

Office 12 File Formats for early risers

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 03:12:00 GMT

Just got my schedule for TechEd Europe. For better or worse, I'm scheduled for 7 July 2005 Start: 08:30 Finish: 09:45. Yes, that's right. The first session of the morning after the attendee party the night before. Excellent! I'm sure you'll all be there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

You'll also want to check out Mark Bower's sessions for more Office XML information.

Form Library Column Names

Jessica Gruber — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 08:09:00 GMT

Ah, my first proper post. Hope you can contain yourself <grin>

This is a quick little InfoPath tip that may not change your life but that should be useful. I was wondering about it recently and found the answer. Then someone else asked about it as well. Must be important!

When you publish an InfoPath form to a SharePoint Form Library, you choose which fields in the form will be the columns in the library. If you don't do anything special, the names of the fields in the forms are displayed as the names of the columns. This could get ugly if you name your fields things like thisIsMyDateField. Not a nice column name, really.

To get friendlier names for your columns:

In the InfoPath UI, go to Tools | Options and the Form Library Columns tab
If you've already added columns, click the Modify button; otherwise click the Add button
Choose the field for the column; notice that the Column Name textbox below is filled with the node name of the field you've just chosen
Change the value in the Column Name textbox to your preferred friendlier column name.

There you go! Quick and easy!

Jumping in feet first

Jessica Gruber — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:50:00 GMT

Welcome! Let me introduce myself...

My name is Jessica Gruber and I'm a consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK. I've been with MS for nearly four years. I started out consulting on SharePoint 2001 and moved into the Office System during the beta releases of SharePoint Portal Products and Technologies and InfoPath. Am still working with those technologies and am now moving into the Office 12 space.

The main reason for FINALLY getting this blog up and running, after much "encouragement" from my colleagues, is that I'm presenting at two events soon and want to have a place to talk about my presentation topics and to post content after the events. The plan is for the blog to carry on even after those events, of course!

The two events are:

UK Office Developer Conference (29 - 30 June at Heathrow outside London) where I'll be presenting on Developing InfoPath Forms using Managed Code and on Customizing and Branding SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services

TechEd Europe (5 - 8 July in Amsterdam) where my topic will be “Office 12” Preview: Default Open XML File Formats. Happily my session is the first one listed if you use the search tool and search for the "Windows Client Development" track!

Anyway, my hope is that we can share all sorts of knowledge and information here and that we can learn from each other. Come along with me on this blog adventure into the Office System!

(Whew, that first post is always the worst, isn't it? Hopefully new posts will be a bit more on the topics of SPS, WSS, InfoPath, and Office 12. I've got a few posts bouncing around in my head that will get published as soon as I can get them out.)