Code Eater

Mabrook (congratulations) for Saudi Arabia winning the Accessibility Award for 2009 in Egypt

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:40:37 GMT

I want to highlight is our Win as a country and a big recognition to our friend Adel Al Awami. I wish him the best and hope that he will continue to change the perception of our country and to be recognized as pioneers insha’allah.

i’ll leave you with some quotes:

Congratulations to team ATST from Saudi Arabia. They are the first place winner. Team members Adel Al-Awami and Moshira M Ali created an innovative solution for communicating in Arabic Sign Language. The application converts written text into video sign language. This is a complex problem to tackle, given the large number of signs, the construct of sign language, and properly piecing together video clips into a coherent stream. Team ATST's work has significantly expanded the dictionary used in this translation system. Congratulations to Team ATST from Saudi Arabia.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/presscentre/pressreleases/UNMillenniumPR_080709.mspx

http://www.itp.net/561560-microsoft-contest-reveals-young-arab-talent

أحرز المركز الأول عالمياً بين 5 آلاف مشروع في مسابقة كأس التخيل الطلابية لتيسير الحاسب لذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة بتنظيم «مايكروسوفت»

المترجم الإشاري .. إنجاز جديد لفرع الجامعة العربية المفتوحة في السعودية

http://www.aleqt.com/2009/07/22/article_254985.html

SharePoint Support Model

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:07:55 GMT

SharePoint site owners, plant system administrators, help desk personnel, and other various support resources create an effective support system with proper channels of escalation for end users of the SharePoint environments. This team handles application questions, bugs, and other problems requiring issue resolution.

SharePoint Roles and Responsibilities

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:02:00 GMT

If you have a Medium to large SharePoint Farm in an enterprise. i found that this model look convenient to many companies.

Event 6482 in SharePoint on Query Server

Wael A. Kabli — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:26:47 GMT

I have face this and I searched the net with no solution. Then i’ve found few leads to the solution.

Problem:

if you have a farm and decided to add a Query server for Microsoft Office Search Service, you might face the following error on Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.0 and .NET 3.5 SP1 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with SP2 and April CU:

Error in Event Log:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Office SharePoint Server
Date:          7/19/2009 2:58:34 AM
Event ID:      6482
Task Category: Office Server Shared Services

Description:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (5fec684c-53be-4a16-89a3-3d3d194e8f67).

Reason:

Object 66a9ed68-c956-4bb3-af4f-3b9eb257a64e not found.

Techinal Support Details:

System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: Object 66a9ed68-c956-4bb3-af4f-3b9eb257a64e not found.
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.get_App()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

Solution:

What you simply need is to update the .NET 3.5 SP1 by turning on the Windows Update and then run the SharePoint Technologies Wizard.

Note: This will need a restart.

Reference:

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Office SharePoint Server" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">6482</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>1328</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2009-07-18T23:58:34.000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>2237</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance</Data>
    <Data>5fec684c-53be-4a16-89a3-3d3d194e8f67</Data>
    <Data>Object 66a9ed68-c956-4bb3-af4f-3b9eb257a64e not found.</Data>
    <Data>
      System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: Object 66a9ed68-c956-4bb3-af4f-3b9eb257a64e not found.
      at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchApi.get_App()
      at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()
      at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)
    </Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

I got My Tag, get your now

Wael A. Kabli — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:05:23 GMT

I have just got my tag from http://microsoft.com/tag

its very simple, it something like Barcode!

1) Create your own tag

2) print it and stick it on anything you like

3) snap it with your phone

4) the application on your phone will show you what tag is this and what are the information it has.

تم إعلان الانتهاء من إصدارة ويندوز 7!

Wael A. Kabli — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:27:12 GMT

قبل ساعات من وقت كتابة هذا المقال ، تم إصدار ويندوز 7 أو "Windows 7" هذه المرحلة الأخيرة او الاصدارة النهائية والتي تعلن أن المنتج جاهز للتوزيع "RTM or Release to Manufacture" وسيبدأ التوزيع اللآن لكل منتجي الحواسيب و شركاء مايكروسوفت الذين ساهموا في مساعتدنا لإصدار المنتج بهذا الشكل.

إصدار ويندوز لم يعد يعتمد على شركة مايكروسوف فقط، ولكن يعتمد عل نظام متكامل يساعد فيه الشركاءو الشركات المصنعة يتعاون فيه الجميع للخروج بإصدار بهذا الشكل.

سوف يتم توفير الاصدار في المحلات التجارية (بيع التجزئة) مع تاريخ 22 أكتوبر 2009 إن شاء الله.

لمزيد من المعلومات: مدونة فريق الهندسة لويندوز 7 http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

في هذه اللحظة أنا لا أملك معلومات دقيقة عن تاريخ توفره في المملكة العربية السعودية ومنطقتنا العربية. وسأوافي بالتفاصيل عندما أحصل عليها.

تحديث:

متى أحصل على نسخة ويندوز 7؟

إذا ذهبت للأسواق ستجد النسخة الإنجليزية بعد تاريخ 22 أكتوبر

إذا ذهبت للأسواق ستجد النسخة العربية بعد تاريخ 5 سبتمبر

الأجهزة المحمولة التي تحمل ويندوز 7 مسبقا ستبدأ بالإصدار بتاريخ 24 يوليو

إذا كنت في شركة مشتركة في برنامح Volume License ستحصل عليه بتاريخ 1 سبتمبر

إذا كنت في شركة في برنامج Software Assurance ستحصل عليه بتاريخ 7 أغسطس

إذا كنت من مشتركي TechNet أو MSDN فسوف يكون متوفرا بتاريخ 6 أغسطس

تحديث: هذا فيديو يظهر فيه فريق ويندوز 7 قبل دقائق من التوقع على انتهاء المتج

Variation system force checkin, the bottom-up approach

Wael A. Kabli — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:56:31 GMT

Variation is one these features that you need to be careful playing with in SharePoint. It requires understanding the mechanism and its internal working parts. Hence, the lack of such level of understanding will result in undesired behavior.

Problem

One of the problems I have faced with my clients is the "Variation System Force Checkin" problem. It all started when a site admin browsed his/her site and found that his changes to the page were lost and and the page is acting weird! He ran to the version history and found out that his/her changes became older version and the system admin checked-in the page forcefully. of course the blame may come to system administrators that they were the ones who forced the checkin.

Explanation

The figure above explains what happens when a page is created in the source site "A" and approved, it will be pushed to the other sites "B" and "C" (other languages).

Now, what happens when you approve a page in the source site with version 1.0. Then, it will be copied to destination sites for translations. during translation the destination page will checked out to the translator. What if the source publish a newer version 2.0 of the same page. Of course, with this automatic behavior a newer version will be pushed into the destination and the current ones will be force to checkin with an automatic comment from sharePoint "Variation System Force checkin" and a newer version is added to the version history.

SharePoint useful code snippets 1/5: Workflow Report

Wael A. Kabli — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:14:00 GMT

Code Name

Workflow report

Code Functionality

This script will run on any SharePoint server and generate a report on all subsites (SPWeb) for a given site collection.

Code Usage

Run the script and save its results in a text file. Then copy the text file and paste them in Excel. Select the table in excel and on the insert tab, click on table.

For example:

WorkflowReport.exe > WorkflowReport.txt http://MysharePointSiteUrl

Output Snapshot

Code Snippet

static void Main(string[] args)

{

string siteUrl = default(string);

Console.WriteLine("This app will give a reprt on all workflows...");

Console.WriteLine("Please provide the url for the web application");

siteUrl = Console.ReadLine();

GetReportForOneSiteCollection(siteUrl);

}

static bool writeheader = true;

private static void GetReportForOneSiteCollection(string siteUrl)

{

SPSite site = new SPSite(siteUrl);

foreach (SPWeb subsite in site.AllWebs)

{

GetWebReport(site, subsite);

}

site.Dispose();

}

private static void GetWebReport(SPSite site, SPWeb subsite)

{

try

{

foreach (SPList list in subsite.Lists)

{

GetListReport(site, subsite, list);

}

subsite.Dispose();

}

catch

{

//Console.Write(subsite.Name + "\t\t");

//Console.Write("The Site has no usage data\r\n");

}

private static void GetListReport(SPSite site, SPWeb subsite, SPList list)

{

try

{

foreach (SPListItem item in list.Items)

{

GetItemReport(site, subsite, list, item);

}

catch

{

//Console.Write(subsite.Name + "\t\t");

//Console.Write("The Site has no usage data\r\n");

}

private static void GetItemReport(SPSite site, SPWeb subsite, SPList list, SPListItem item)

{

try

{

SPWorkflowCollection spwfc =

site.WorkflowManager.GetItemActiveWorkflows(item);

if (writeheader)

{

Console.Write("Site URL" + "\t");

Console.Write("Web URL" + "\t");

Console.Write("Item Url" + "\t");

Console.Write("Auther Username" + "\t");

Console.Write("Auther Email" + "\t");

Console.Write("Workflow Created" + "\t");

Console.Write("Is Completed" + "\t");

Console.Write("Is Locked" + "\t");

Console.Write("Workflow Status" + "\t");

Console.Write("Task List" + "\t");

Console.Write("Number of Taks" + "\t");

Console.Write("History List" + "\t");

Console.WriteLine("");

writeheader = false;

}

foreach (SPWorkflow wf in spwfc)

{

Console.Write(subsite.Url+ "\t");

Console.Write(item.Url + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.AuthorUser.LoginName + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.AuthorUser.Email + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.Created + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.IsCompleted + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.IsLocked + "\t");

string s = resolveState(wf.InternalState);

Console.Write( s + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.TaskList.Title + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.Tasks.Count + "\t");

Console.Write(wf.HistoryList.Title + "\t");

Console.WriteLine("");

}

catch

{

//Console.Write(subsite.Name + "\t\t");

//Console.Write("The Site has no usage data\r\n");

}

private static string resolveState(SPWorkflowState sPWorkflowState)

{

string result = default(string);

result = sPWorkflowState.ToString();

switch (sPWorkflowState)

{

case SPWorkflowState.All:

result = "All";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Cancelled:

result = "Cancelled";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Completed:

result = "Completed";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Expired:

result = "Expired";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Expiring:

result = "Expiring";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Faulting:

result = "Faulting";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.HasNewEvents:

result = "HasNewEvents";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Locked:

result = "Locked";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.NotStarted:

result = "NotStarted";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Orphaned:

result = "Orphaned";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Running:

result = "Running";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Suspended:

result = "Suspended";

break;

case SPWorkflowState.Terminated:

result = "Terminated";

break;

}

return result;

}

When Kerberos and SharePoint became friends :)

Wael A. Kabli — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:41:18 GMT

Finally, SharePoint and Kerberos became friends, the technet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263449.aspx is exmpaling the whole kerberos story along with sharepoint. This includes having NLB in the farm with multiple service account with multiple server roles.

The only thing that is missing from this article (which i think is out of scope) is the case of having SQL Cluster failover. in that case this article is the best one explaining that: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189585(SQL.90).aspx.

Conficker

Wael A. Kabli — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:04:25 GMT

On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced a U.S. $250,000 reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet. Microsoft’s reward offer stems from the company’s recognition that the Conficker worm is a criminal attack. Microsoft wants to help the authorities catch the criminals responsible for it. Residents of any country are eligible for the reward, according to the laws of that country, because Internet viruses affect the Internet community worldwide.

Individuals with information about the Conficker worm are encouraged to contact their international law enforcement agencies. Additionally, Microsoft has implemented an Antivirus Reward Hotline, 1-425-706-1111, and an Antivirus Reward Mailbox, avreward@microsoft.com, where tips can be shared.

SharePoint Updates

Wael A. Kabli — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:25:58 GMT

Now finally SharePoint updates are much easier right now, but there is no documentation to tell you that :)

SharePoint Update Rule of Thumb

Now, to get your sharepoint up to date, use this simple rule: "Get the sharepoint latest service pack and the latest cumulative update" and thats it,,

for example, the if you want to install a fresh installation of sharepoint, you need to have it with SP1 and December cumulative updates. No need for the infrastructure updates because they are now included.

if you visit the SharePoint Team blog: Announcing December Cumulative Update for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint S they explain it clearly as i did here...

Updated: the technet article is now updated : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx and it shows that,

Recommended installation sequence for updates

Microsoft enforces the installation order of service packs, but does not enforce the installation order of packages or patches. You can install packages or patches in any order you want, so long as every server in your farm is updated to the same level when you are done. In addition, there is no requirement to install an update unless your servers are affected by the problem described in the KB article for the update.

Although Microsoft does not enforce the update installation sequence, we recommend that you install the post-RTM updates for Office SharePoint Server that you require in the following sequence:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (KB 936988)
The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (KB 936984)
The Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 December Cumulative Update (KB 960010)
The Microsoft Office Servers December Cumulative Update (KB 960011)

It feels Good :D

Wael A. Kabli — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:25:00 GMT

I was hesitating for long time to do it, now i did it and it feels good :D. basically i have followed the Bamboo road and did it their way. for long time i was relying of virtual machines to demo, try things, play with moss and develop & Test.

the options were difficult, either to have all my application open or my virtual machine open and it is still slow and no i don't have the hardware virtualization assistance. so i have intalled sharepoint on vista and i can tell you from here, it feels good.

I have Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (standalone) with SP1 and December Updates + Microsoft Office SharePoint Desinger 2007 on a Lenovo Think Pad (4030 RAM and 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU) with windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit edition.

The way to do it

basically if you follow the bamboo way,

1. download the software that simply helps you doing that: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/media/p/193.aspx

2. Follow the article from Jonas Nilsson on how you can do that quickly: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx

3. Now you can fly!

Important Note

You would've figured it out so far but i am gonna say it anyways, don't be smart and come ask'en for support. This is a tweak (unofficial way) to install the product. The prduct is official only if it is installed on the windows server family 2003 and more!