Sridhar's Blog

HowTo: Create a quizzing application with SharePoint 2007

2008-12-16T00:44:00Z

With SharePoint 2007 "Survey" list template, I recently created a quizzing application. The thing with survey list is that it stack ranks the questions taking into account how many of the respondents favored each options within that question. But for a quizzing application, we need to be able to stack rank the respondents on how many of their options where correct. "Survey" list template, traditionally (by-design) cannot be used for a quiz requirement, but will some careful planning and custom-coding,...(read more)

How do I use SecureString type in SharePoint 2007?

2008-10-17T00:18:00Z

SecureString is the type that's used for passwords in SharePoint 2007. You might find its use when you are automating some "higher level" administration operation (like creating a web application for example). How do you use it is shown below: 1: private static SecureString ConvertString( string strPwd) 2: { 3: if (strPwd == null ) 4: return null ; 5: SecureString strSecurePassword = new SecureString(); 6: foreach ( char ch in strPwd) 7: strSecurePassword.AppendChar(ch); 8: strSecurePassword.MakeReadOnly();...(read more)

Using Post Caching Substitution in SharePoint 2007 Web Parts

2008-08-13T03:16:00Z

There are good number of articles that explains the different caching option Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides and ways to leverage them to achieve better site performance. However, there are scenarios where you might want to implement output caching on your site/page, but have some controls (Web Parts, User Control) excluded from caching so that they dynamically have their content updated on every request. These are the kind of scenarios where you'd be using Post Caching Substitution....(read more)

Wildcard Search in SharePoint

2008-07-30T03:36:00Z

Being able to perform wildcard search is probably an area that's missing in out of the box search in SharePoint. Here's a small web part sample you can use to perform wildcard search in MOSS 2007 (and it can be engineered backward to fit into SharePoint Portal Server 2003 as well). The code in it is very crude, I agree :) It's just a sample I wrote once and built upon multiple times for several different customer situations and so you might find commented out code snippets. I have not put in any...(read more)

"Failed to verify user permissions" error when using DspSts.asmx web service

2008-07-30T00:42:00Z

I recently handled a case where the customer sees a "Failed to verify user permissions" error when accessing the DspSts.asmx web service in SharePoint 2007. Below is the code similar to what they were using to invoke the Query method of DspSts.asmx web service. It's also very similar to the same provided in SharePoint SDK. Surprisingly, they saw this error only in their environment and we were unable to replicate it at our end. The code: 1: string siteUrl = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings[ "siteUrl"...(read more)

The buzz with "UrlQueryString" in SharePoint navigation

2008-07-24T15:07:00Z

SharePoint's navigation APIs have a property exposed that allows us to set query string properties for a URL. Sadly, but not surprisingly, this only works when root site collection has publishing feature enabled. Reason is simple... One a WSS only OR on a site where publishing feature is not enabled, the property "UrlQueryString" is not available in the default property enumeration of the navigation node's property collection. Run a simple code like the following 1: SPNavigationNodeCollection quickLaunchNodes...(read more)

Organization Hierarchy a Mess?

2008-07-15T02:00:00Z

The "Organization Hierarchy" is a cool little thing that let's SharePoint users to remember who their colleagues are and more importantly who their manager is. If you are wondering about customizing it, honestly, it's quite a bit of a work if you want to do that via features or using OM for the "small" issue in hand. This pretty little control is actually marked up in the person.aspx page in the "SPSMSITEHOST" site definition. The actual control reference is "SPSWC:ProfileManages". Looks like this...(read more)

FBA and User Display Names in SharePoint 2007

2008-07-14T04:01:00Z

If you have been working with FBA for a while, you might have noticed that the user name displayed in the Welcome control shows the account name of the FBA user. This is because of the field the welcome control is mapped to. As shown here, the welcome control simply points to the name property of the SPUser object. One way of making it to display the full name is to import User Profile from your FBA data source and wait for the timer service job to complete to see the full name displayed in the Welcome...(read more)

Why are my SharePoint Groups drop-down disabled?

2008-07-07T21:03:00Z

This was an interesting issue. The problem a customer reported was that when they wanted to add a user to a SharePoint Group, the "Add users to a SharePoint group" drop-down was disabled. On investigation, it was found the customer was creating a web application and a site collection "on-the-fly", through SharePoint object model code. They were also creating their custom SharePoint groups that were derived from default groups. However, they are not able...(read more)

What happened to my My Links Web Part?

2008-06-27T10:55:00Z

Well, did you add a link like "file://C:/folder1/folder2"? In one customer's environment this was the exact issue. A user added some file system link like the above and ended up with the following symptoms: 1. The user couldn't add the "My Links" web part to his/her MySite. Whenever he/she tries, it results in an error as shown below This apparently becomes very bad, as he/she would not be able to access his/her MySite after that (unless they remove the "My Links" web part from the page). 2. And...(read more)

What permissions are behind the permission levels (roles) in SharePoint

2008-06-27T05:42:00Z

Recently, I was involved in a support request where I had to find out what SPBasePermissions are assigned behind permission level in SharePoint using SharePoint OM code. First some basics about permission level and base permissions. If you are in your SharePoint site, click Site Actions > Site Settings > click "People and groups" under "Users and Permissions" section > click "Site Permissions" in the left navigation menu > And use the Settings menu in the Permissions list to select "Permission...(read more)

Indexing MSCMS 2001 using MOSS 2007 indexer?

2008-06-26T00:23:00Z

This might be a cake-walk for most of you, but I got delayed a bit to get MSCMS 2001 contents indexed using MOSS 2007. Basically what I saw after I setup a content source and started a full crawl was the below warning: The specified address was excluded from the index. The crawl rules may have to be modified to include this address. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.) I verified the content access account specified in MOSS is also a CMS 2001...(read more)

Project to customize the small search control in SharePoint 2007

2008-06-21T21:48:00Z

The small search control that is rendered in the default SharePoint pages is a delegate control rendered through master page. You can find it defined in the master page as follows: < asp : ContentPlaceHolder id ="PlaceHolderSearchArea" runat ="server"> < SharePoint : DelegateControl runat ="server" ControlId ="SmallSearchInputBox" /> </ asp : ContentPlaceHolder > This control is actually available through a feature called "OSearchBasicFeature" located under 12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES....(read more)

Create and Publish web pages in Publishing SharePoint sites programmatically

2008-06-21T19:22:00Z

Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing is the assembly that we need to use to get pages created and published. A sample is provided below: using ( SPSite site = new SPSite ( "http://moss" )) { using ( SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb()) { PublishingSite pSite = new PublishingSite (site); SPContentType ctype = pSite.ContentTypes[ "Welcome Page" ]; PageLayoutCollection pageLayouts = pSite.GetPageLayouts(ctype, true ); PageLayout pageLayout = pageLayouts[ "/_catalogs/masterpage/welcomesplash.aspx" ]; PublishingWeb...(read more)

"The site is not assigned to an indexer" error in SharePoint custom search

2008-06-21T17:39:00Z

Strangely enough! We'll not see this issue with an OOTB search. It is seen only when we use search APIs or web service and perform a custom search. Apparently, when we use Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, the content database also gets indexed and this content database should be assigned to the particular site we are searching against. The way you do this is by going to SharePoint Central Administration site > Application Management > Content Databases > click the content database in the...(read more)