Tobias Lekman - Blog

SilverLight 4 – Out in beta with lots of new features

2009-11-19T08:13:00.001Z

The new SilverLight release was previewed on Microsoft PDC. It will get full connectivity with SharePoint 2010. New key features: 200% faster (?) Support for web cams and microphones Official Google Chrome support C# and CLR code without recompile (dynamics?) 60 customisable and styleable components (rich text box, data grids etc) Right-to-left support and localisation

Working with SharePoint 2010: The “Developer Consultant”

2009-11-11T15:18:00.001Z

From all the new features in SharePoint 2010, most seem to be focused around developers and development productivity. There are lots of talk about the new Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint, the “Business Connectivity Services” and sandboxed web parts. Does this mean that we will spend more or less time writing actual code? At the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, I sat in on the “best

Microsoft to offer “Application Marketplace” in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-06T17:12:00.002Z

Microsoft will offer an application marketplace in SharePoint 2010, where third-party suppliers can publish applications into “The Gallery” (think Windows Marketplace/Apple App Store etc), a feature in SharePoint 2010 that serves as a central place for templates.RIght now there are very few details about the rules and regulations surrounding the marketplace, but I bet that the lines of sandboxed

The new OpenXML SDK

2009-11-05T11:31:00.001Z

I have spent the last couple of weeks creating a Word report based on SharePoint data that spans over a hundred pages using tables and custom graphs. To do this, I used OpenXML. The file format (.docx) is basically a ZIP file containing a bunch of XML files. I did this using LINQ, XSLT and System.IO.Packaging to compress and order the XML sections into a .docx file. The OpenXML SDK version 1

Geographically distributed deployments of SharePoint 2010

2009-11-05T11:29:00.001Z

SharePoint 2010 brings a large amount of improvements for geographically distributed SharePoint installations. SharePoint deployments can be categorized in the following segments: Uni-centric deployments SharePoint is installed on a single data centre with a geographically dispersed user base. Multi-centric deployments SharePoint is installed on multiple data centres across

Sandboxed Solutions

2009-10-21T18:32:00.003+01:00

One of the largest paradigm shifts for developers in SharePoint 2010 is presented with “sandboxed solutions”. “A sandboxed solution is a new concept in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation that allows site collection users to upload their own custom code solutions. A sandboxed solution uses a subset of the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace. These objects are marked in the object model to show their

SharePoint 2010 brings versioning to Web Parts

2009-10-21T18:32:00.001+01:00

In the upcoming release of SharePoint Server 2010 we will see versioning of web parts and their properties. Why is this important? In the past we had full versioning and approval workflows around the contents of items and pages but any change to web parts and their properties were instantaneous. This caused a lot of confusion and aggravation as web parts, their configurations and content were

No new posts

2009-09-18T09:31:00.001+01:00

There will be no new posts and have been none for a long time. I am currently working on a series of posts regarding Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and cannot release these until the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with Microsoft is lifted. The posts will be released before Christmas this year. This site will then also be hosted in Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Truncating all logs within a SQL server

2009-05-14T09:29:00.001+01:00

While working on a development server farm, I had issues with lax backups and growing log files. This has also been an issue on stand-alone development VPC images. In these cases, I do not need to back up the databases as they are constantly being rebuilt using “Smoke & Build” and continuous integration. What is not in source control is not worth keeping. I created a batch script that executes

Multiple language support without variations

2009-05-11T08:52:00.001+01:00

My site uses variations to publish Arabic and English content. This works well for all pages except for the login page, which sits in the root site at “/pages/login.aspx” and uses forms authentication. I have implemented a custom language switch which allows the culture to be switched dynamically. This is done by using a custom code-behind page for the layout. First, I override the OnPreInit to

Deploying Language Variations using Features

2009-05-08T13:01:00.001+01:00

As I perform daily smoke & build using continuous integration, I required the rollout of variation labels to be automatic. There are a few solutions out there, but the best solution out there, in my mind, is created by Waldek Mastykarz, which uses reflections to create the variation labels. I have tweaked the code to make it feature configurable as I needed to specify the variations in the

SharePoint language pack installation

2009-05-08T12:03:00.001+01:00

As a note on installing language packs for SharePoint, you need to install English variations even though the base installation is English. If this is not done, then you will experience issues with field translations. For example, I am using English and Arabic and will install the language packs in the following order: English language packs installed in the following order: 32 bit

Custom Search Results

2009-02-20T09:31:00.001Z

While customizing a SharePoint search results page, I received questions on how to generally customize search. In this post, I will show how to create a very simple standards-compliant search results page using customization only. First of all, I create a custom search results page and add it to my site definition. I also ensure that the page is set to be the global search center target. You

Custom Search Input Controls

2009-02-19T12:10:00.001Z

I recently reviewed an implementation of a custom search control placed within the master page within a SharePoint application. The control redirected to a hard-coded search page URL, one that did not correspond to the general search results page used within the portal. To ensure that a single shared search results page is used, add the following feature to your site definition: 1: <

Tracking solution version numbers

2009-01-15T09:55:00.001Z

I recently had a long discussion with a colleague regarding package versions when deploying SharePoint features. After some investigation, it seems that the SharePoint object model does not contain a version number for solution, only a time of last update. But... if you use the CodePlex SharePoint Installer it registers a version number using the configuration property SolutionVersion.

Cache Dependencies in SharePoint

2008-12-04T13:10:00.001Z

While writing a data layer based on data stored in a SharePoint list, I implemented the collection as a static singleton that forced refreshes of the data every 15 minutes. A colleague was doing something similar in a roll-up web part and we started discussing Cache Dependency objects used for the HttpContext. Could this work with SharePoint objects? No, says "The Kid". But he gave me a good

SharePoint Testing Base Class

2008-12-04T12:55:00.001Z

I have created a base class library for testing SharePoint projects using unit tests, regression tests, integration tests and automated browser tests. It uses the two third-party applications TypeMock Isolator for SharePoint and WatIN. As an example, if a web part calls the SPContext as: 1: ///

2: /// Primitive sample of web part using the

SharePoint Solution Installer Fix

2008-12-01T17:56:00.001Z

When using the SharePoint Solution Installer from CodePlex, you frequently receive the error message (as discussed within the discussions on the site) "This solution contains resources scoped for a Web application and must be deployed to one or more Web applications" This can easily be fixed by changing the code within InstallProcessControl.Open 1: protected internal override void

Extended Lookup - v1.0 (Alpha)

2008-12-01T17:07:00.001Z

The Extended Lookup Field for SharePoint is now in public alpha release. The application works but still needs a lot of refactoring and general tidying up before it is suitable to use on public projects. Known issues: The control does not support multiple lookup values yet The project is going into testing now and the following will soon be added: Support for multiple lookup values

SharePoint Guidance: Comments

2008-11-20T11:52:00.001Z

In November, Microsoft released the SharePoint Guidance document under their patterns & practices section. The idea of centralized best practices for SharePoint is a compelling one as the bulk reference for the platform is based in loose information from various blogs and discussion forums. After reviewing the document, I felt that some comments and questions were necessary. List Definition

Workflow Extensions and Item Template for Debugging

2008-11-18T17:02:00.001Z

A huge issue around workflows in general is tracing and error handling. When a workflow encounters an error it will simply state "Error Occurred" within the workflow status column. The data is then written to the SharePoint log file. Previously, I was using the Unified Log Viewer from CodePlex which I do recommend, but at times I found it hard to get on a live server's central administration

SharePoint Workflow Debugging "gotchas"

2008-11-18T16:26:00.001Z

The workflow templates that come with the SharePoint 2007 SDK have a good few issues. Some of the "gotchas" around deployment and debugging include: To get the project wizard to work, the SharePoint site that you connect to must contain a task list a document library You need dbowner rights or equivalent directly on the SharePoint content database A copy

Extended Lookup Field for SharePoint

2008-11-16T14:26:00.010Z

I am currently working on an open source project on CodePlex named "Extended Lookup", an extension of the lookup field type definition in Microsoft SharePoint 2007. One problem with lookup fields are the limitation of using source lists within the same site, or SPWeb, and that the source data cannot be filtered. For example, you might want to create a lookup to a list within another site and