Ed has asked if a few of us could help out with his survey by posting a link to it here. I'm happy to help out:

Greetings Blog Readers,

My name is Ed Jolly, and I am a director in the Commercial Technical Support (CTS) organization at Microsoft. I am here to request a few minutes of your time.

We would like to learn more about blog readership through a brief survey. This is an opportunity for us to better understand what is valuable to you and what you would like to see in the future.

Below is a link that will take you to another website to complete the survey. Based on what we learn, we may request more feedback in future surveys like this.  When you open the survey, you will see a list of blogs that CTS engineers contribute to across many different products. We have not posted a listing of these blogs in the past, and I hope it helps you find other blogs that are helpful to you.

The blog survey is completely anonymous.

· Location: http://www.tsisurveys.com/mssurveys/blog/index.asp (no longer available)

· Availability:  Until August 22. You may receive a request to complete this survey through multiple RSS feeds. You need only to complete it one time.

· Length: The survey can be a maximum of 11 questions.

· Time: Less than 5 minutes (but providing more information in the open text fields may take a minute or two extra, improving our ability to understand your needs in these blogs).

Thank you in advance for your time, participation and assistance.

Ed Jolly (edjolly@microsoft.com)

This may seem a bit odd for a blog post, but I wanted our new team position to get as much exposure as possible. After all, we are hoping to attract the very best! :)

We are seeking an individual who is passionate about web technologies, such as Microsoft SharePoint / Designer. Specifically, we are looking for someone who has interest and aptitude in some of the following areas: HTML, CSS, XML, XSLT, JavaScript, SOAP, ASP.NET, SQL, web design + development, workflows, etc. Overall, we are a small and closely knit team, but make a large impact in the greater SharePoint ecosystem. It's a challenging position that requires cross-product knowledge, the ability to learn quickly, and a willingness to take on technically complex and politically challenging cases.

Anyways, enough of my little blurb about the team and the position. Read the official details here. Also, feel free to comment on this post or email us at blogspd@microsoft.com with any questions you may have.

Symptoms:

When attempting to insert a custom list form in SharePoint Designer the form never displays in design view. There is no error message, and the form never gets inserted into the page.

Cause:

There may be multiple causes. Thus far, we've identified that it can occur because of a failed SP1 install for MOSS. If you take a look at the Netmon traffic and compare it to a healthy server all you'll notice it is missing SOAP calls. Note: The other thing that is odd about this issue is that all SPD users will experience it.

Resolution:

Method 1 - Fix the failed upgrade.

You'll need to reinstall SP1 using our recommendations:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945013/

Method 2 - Clean up the user profile.

You'll need to clean up the user profile using these steps:

1. Close SharePoint Designer 2007.
2. Clear your Internet Explorer's temporary Internet cache.
3. Open My Computer and go to %System Drive%\Documents and Settings\%user%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\WebSiteCache (If you are running Vista, that path is different - look for %System Drive%\Users\%user%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSiteCache).
4. Go to a directory that looks similar to the name of the website you were connecting to.
5. Delete the assembly with the name of your SharePoint Site.
6. Type %temp% at a run prompt and delete all the temp files in there.
7. Delete the contents of: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache.
   

Symptoms:

After creating a custom new item form for a SharePoint list having a very large number of items, the new item form will take a very long time to load at browse time. There are no error messages.

Cause: 

The issue happens because the default value "0" of the ListItemID parameter of the data source in the new item form causes a very resource intensive query to be run at page load time. This causes the perfiormance issue during page load. The reason we include all those parameters is to make the datasourcecontrol extensible in design time. The datasourcecontrol can be used by another webpart or view on the page and it could still work. If you don’t need those scenarios, then removing them should still work in runtime.

Workaround:

1. Using the "Common Data View Tasks" pane for the new item form, click on "Parameters" to open the "Data View Parameters" dialog box.
2. Select ListItemID and delete "0" in the Default Value input box.
   
3. Leave the default value of ListItemID blank and click on OK.
   
4. Save the page, and browse to it.

Additional Advice / Tip:

When working with large data sets you may experience other slowness in SharePoint Designer while working with data views. In those situations, you may see SharePoint Designer as non-responsive for several seconds after changes are made and / or may seem very sluggish once it's responding. Quick fix is to click "Common Data View Tasks" pane for the data view, and select "Show with sample data". Instead of showing all of the data from the data source, it limits it to 5 sample items.
 

Symptoms:

After restoring a SharePoint site using site template .STP files, .CMP files, or the stsadm commands import / export all data views / data forms show error messages.

Web browser error: "Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator."

SharePoint Designer error: "The server returned a non-specific error when trying to get data from the data source. Check the format and content of your query and try again. If the problem persists, contact the server administrator."

Cause:

This is a known issue, actually. We have done some work for O14 which will address this problem. The issue is caused by the incorrect ListName, which is a GUID id for the list's instance on a given site instance. We don't do GUID fix-up, and therefore the broken data views are pointing to the incorrect data source (from the old site).

Workaround:

1. Start SharePoint Designer, and open page containing broken data view(s).
2. In SharePoint Designer's menu, click Task Panes -> Data Source Library.
3. From the Data Source Library task pane, drag in a new instance of the broken data view's data source (example: Announcements list) onto the page. This will create a new and working data view.
4. Highlight the newly inserted data view, and go into split view (half code, half design). From the code portion highlighted, look for the ListName property. Note: it should be on the first line of the highlighted code, but you may have to scroll to the right in order to see it.
5. Once you find the ListName property, copy everything in between { ... } (without the braces). Store that value, as we will need it later (example: paste into Notepad).
6. Remove the newly inserted data view.
7. Highlight the broken data view, and go into split view (half code, half design). From the code portion highlighted, look for the ListName Property. Note: it should be on the first line of the highlighted code, but you may have to scroll to the right in order to see it.
8. Once you find the ListName property, copy everything in between { ... } (without the braces).
9. In SharePoint Designer's menu, click Edit -> Replace. In the "Find What" portion, paste in the broken data views ListName value. In the "Replace With" portion, paste in the previous working data view's ListName value (example: the one stored in Notepad). Click Replace All, and let the process finish. Click close.
10. Perform steps 3 - 9 for each respective data view.

I've seen several support instances with questions and concerns on this problem. Hopefully, this helps you to understand the cause of the problem, and how to fix it.

Symptoms:

After replacing normal list form (ListFormWebPart) with custom list form (DataFormWebPart) on any of the supporting files (New, Edit, Display) for a SharePoint list, the list view properties do not work as expected. Hyperlinks for corresponding supporting file will point to erroneous or incorrect location.

Example: replacing normal list form with a custom list form on supporting file DispForm.aspx results in "display" hyperlinks going to an erroneous page, such as a different, un-intended supporting file.

This is incredibly frustrating, right? Here is a sure-fire to prevent this from occurring.

Prevention:

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2007. Go to File | Open Site and connect to SharePoint site.
2. Expand out Lists -> [List Name] -> open DispForm.aspx .
3. Highlight normal list form by clicking on it. This will select the entire web
   part.
4. Right-click on selected web part, and choose Web Part Properties…
5. Expand [+] Layout, check option for Hidden, click OK.
6. With web part still highlighted, hit the right-arrow key once. Hit Enter. This creates some whitespace to insert.
7. Go to Insert | SharePoint Controls | Custom List Form…
8. Select appropriate list or library, content type, and type of form to create. Click OK.
9. Save page.

NOTE: The steps above are how to prevent supporting files from being incorrectly set to erroneous page, not how to fix a pre-existing problem. That's quite a bit more tricky.

Keeping the normal list form on the page should ensure the supporting files stay intact. Think of this as a sort of “best practice” and you should never run into the problem again.

Additional Information:

KB 935504 - Error message when you click "New" to create a new item in a list or when you click an existing item in SharePoint Server 2007 or in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: "Invalid page URL" or "An unexpected error has occurred"

Note: I'm lifting this from my DataFormWebPart.com blog post, in hopes of the workaround getting more traffic.

Scenarios:

After changing the master page on a Meeting Workspace site, the recurring meeting workspace hyperlinks under “Select a date from the list below” do not work and throw a JavaScript error.

If you create a custom master page and use it for your Meeting Workspaces, a JavaScript error is thrown.

Error:
‘g_InstanceID’ is undefined

Cause:
The g_instanceId global JavaScript variable is declared in a script registered runtime by the Microsoft.SharePoint.Meetings.PropertyBag web control. This control is used in the master page that’s used by Meeting Workspace sites called “MWSDefault.master” (located on server in 12 hive\TEMPLATE\GLOBAL\).

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a new Workspace: Site Actions-> Create Site -> Select [Meetings] Basic Meeting Workspace, click Create.
2. On Workspace site, add a Calendar list: Site Actions -> Create -> [Tracking] Calendar.
3. Add a new event to Calendar list, make recurring event, and select [x] Use a Meeting Workspace to organize attendees, agendas, documents, minutes, and other details for this event. Click OK.
4. Follow steps to create workspace for Calendar event. Go to workspace.
5. Change master page for workspace: Site Actions -> Site Settings -> [Look and Feel] Master page -> select any master page for Site Master Page and System Master Page. Click OK. Go back to workspace.
6. Now the links under “Select a date from the list below:” do not work and throw a JavaScript error message: ‘g_InstanceID’ is undefined .

Workaround:

1. Open SharePoint Designer 2007. Go to File | Open Site and connect to SharePoint site.
2. Expand out _catalogs -> masterpage -> open master page used on Meeting Workspace.
3. In Code View, add the following line of code under <%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint" %> tag:
   
   <%@ Register Tagprefix="Meetings" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Meetings" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>
4. Add the following line of code after opening <body …> tag: <Meetings:PropertyBag runat="server"/>
5. Save master page, check in (if necessary), and publish major version.