Custom Edit Form for SharePoint Lists

If you want to set a custom edit form to your Sharepoint List then please make sure you follow these Golden Rules as correctly suggested by Hugo in a SharePoint news group.

1. NEVER delete or rename the default pages…
   when you want to create a new EditForm.aspx it’s best to copy it to
   another file and then edit the original one (without renaming it and
   without reassigning the supporting files)…
2. DON’T ever delete the webparts that exist.
   It’s better to hide them and create new ones “side-by-side”.

These rules are real time savers and I will highly encourage every reader to follow them.

List of all SharePoint Back-End databases

SharePoint stores end-user content and application configurations across multiple relational databases in the back-end database servers. At a high level, the following are the relational databases:

 Configuration database: Stores topology and configuration information for the complete deployment. Every farm has exactly one configuration database. For information about the configuration database protocols, see Configuration Database.

 Central Administration content database: Stores content associated with the Central Administration site.

 Shared Services Providers (SSP) database: Stores content and configuration for Shared Service Providers (SSPs), such as the user profile services. The capabilities of SSPs are described in [MS-SPFEPO], Section 2.2.2 (Shared Service Provider).

 Shared services administration content database: Stores content for the shared services administration site.

 Content database: Stores all end-user and site content. For information about content databases and protocols, see List and Library Storage.

 Search property store: The search metadata index that stores properties related to pieces of content that are indexed for full-text querying. For information, see section 7.4.1.1.2.

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[MS-SPBEPO] SharePoint Back-End Protocols Overview – v1.0

[MS-SPBEPO]: SharePoint Back-End Protocols Overview

Copyright © 2008 Microsoft Corporation.

Release: Friday, June 27, 2008

 Single sign-on database: Stores credentials for end-users to access information from external applications through SharePoint. For information about the protocols used to access the single sign-on (SSO) database, see Business Data Catalog Protocols.

As described by Microsoft in SharePoint Back-End Protocols Overview

SharePoint stores end-user content and application configurations across multiple relational databases in the back-end database servers. At a high level, the following are the relational databases:

1. Configuration database: Stores topology and configuration information for the complete deployment. Every farm has exactly one configuration database.
2. Central Administration content database: Stores content associated with the Central Administration site.
3. Shared Services Providers (SSP) database: Stores content and configuration for Shared Service Providers (SSPs), such as the user profile services.
4. Shared services administration content database: Stores content for the shared services administration site.
5. Content database: Stores all end-user and site content.
6. Search property store: The search metadata index that stores properties related to pieces of content that are indexed for full-text querying.
7. Single sign-on database: Stores credentials for end-users to access information from external applications through SharePoint.

Quickest way to copy files from GAC

Yes, I know how painful it is to realize that you can not copy an assembly out from Global Assembly Cache (GAC), at least not by usual way of copying a file from a windows folder. Don’t worry, there are some ways to do it and the quickest way to browse the GAC and copy files from it is to just map a drive on Windows\Assembly folder.

Here you go, 

1. From Start-Run type cmd to launch command prompt
2. Type subst Z: C:\windows\Assembly and press Enter
3. Thats it!

Now, you got a drive Z which is mapped to your GAC folder and you can easily open it in Windows Explorer and copy files from it.

Isn’t it easy?

Microsoft SharePoint Designer is now Free !

SharePoint Designer Team at Microsoft has announced at its blog here that Anyone can use SharePoint Designer as a free tool. This is really a step in right direction and will help SharePoint community to build better user experiences. 

You can download the SharePoint Designer from here

Solution for “Virtual PC has detected an invalid or missing Product ID” error

If you are like me and use Virtual PC for developing SharePoint solutions, then you may have encountered the error “Virtual PC has detected an invalid or missing Product ID”.  It happens because Virtual PC try to find its product ID in registry, (Yes! I know Virtual PC never asked you to enter the Product ID during installion) and if it does not find it there then it displays this error.

Here is the quick fix for this error:

 

1. Open System Properties window by clicking System in Windows Control Panel
2. You will get the screen similar to the following



3. Copy the 20 digit long number displayed under Registered to: 
4. Goto Start->Run
5. Type regedit, It will launch the registry editor
6. Navigate to the following registry node My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Micorosoft\Virtual PC\5.0\Registration
7. Edit the value of PID, by double clicking it
8. Paste the value of Windows Product ID, you have copied earlier. Following is an example screen shot of registry



9. Now you can run the Virtual PC normally

Ten Themes for SharePoint in VSeWSS Projects

Ten new SharePoint themes have been released by Microsoft to help SharePoint designers to make new sites more efficientlty. You will find them as individual  Visual Studio 2008 projects which when deployed to SharePoint offer fresh new designed themes you can use in your projects. 

Themes can be downloaded from here

Following is a preview image of these themes (from Sharepoint.microsoft.com)

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.3 – Mar 2009 CTP

A goow news for SharePoint community Microsoft has releasesd the Mar 2009 CTP of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 v1.3. This CTP contains excellent set of functionalities and saves your precious time. You can download the extensions from here

Following is the overview as released by Microsoft

This is the SharePoint developer tools for Visual Studio 2008. These tools are suitable for use with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It includes project and item templates for common SharePoint artifacts, it includes build, packaging and deployment for SharePoint solutions and it includes the SharePoint Solution Generator which creates a new Visual Studio 2008 project from a SharePoint site.

The tools provide item templates for List Definition, List Definition from Content Type, Content Type, Field Control, Web Part, Module, Root File, Template, Event Receiver, and List Instance. It provides project templates for Team Site Definition, Blank Site Definition, List Definition, Web Part and Empty. It works with Visual Basic .NET and C# languages and a comprehensive user guide is included. It does not include the SharePoint Workflow templates as they are built in with Visual Studio 2008.

New features in version 1.3 include:

• Can be installed on x64 Server OS machines running SharePoint x64. Previously only x86 Server OS could be used
• Separate build commands for package, deploy and retract are added as Visual Studio menu items
• WSP View improvements for consistency of deleting feature elements, merging features and adding event receivers to features
• Command line build, package and retract commands are included enabling continuous integration and build servers. Previously command line build of SharePoint projects was very difficult
• Refactoring support for renaming of Web Parts. Previously renaming a web part required changes in several files in the project
• Solution Generator can now generate solutions from publishing sites. Previously only regular sites could be generated
• Allowing partial trust BIN deployments of web parts
• New project item template for SharePoint RootFiles items
• Deployment will now optionally remove conflicting existing features on the development server prior to redeployment. Previously any feature name conflicts would result in an error
• Ancillary assemblies such as for business logic can now be added to the SharePoint Solution WSP
• Hidden features related to Site Definition projects are now shown in WSP View. They are no longer hidden
• For advanced users a fast deploy is included to update only the compiled assembly on the SharePoint development installation
• Deployment step logging is included
• The List Definition from Content Type template now allows for the creation of a List Definition Event Receiver
• The User Guide is now installed with the extensions instead of being a separate download

Got MCTS Status Today! – Exam 70-542 Done!

Today, I got the status of MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 ― Application Development. This exam focuses on Application Development for Sharepoint Portal Server by utilizing enterprise features. If you are preparing for this exam then I will recommend you the book Professional SharePoint 2007 Development from Wrox publishers.

Main topics covered in this exam are:

1.  Business Data Catalog (Definition, management etc.)
2. Data Connection Management, Trusted locations
3. Audience Management
4. User Profiles Management
5. InfoPath Form Server
6. Records Management
7. Documents Management
8. Excel Web Services

You will need to do hands on practice by writing code to make sure you understand object model and context management of API calls.

Good Luck!

How Sharepoint ranks a document in Search Results?

Several times I have been asked about the way Sharepoint calculates the rank of a document in document search. Although, it is based on a complex probablistic algorithm developed by Microsft Researcher, following are some simple tips to know the background of search ranking and how to tune the search results. Please note, these tips are not an authentic statements from Microsoft, instead they are my observations and knowledge gained from other fellow Sharepoint experts.

According to Microsoft on Technet in this article

Ranking depends on:

• The length of the document
• The frequency of the query term in the entire collection of documents
• The number of documents containing the query term
• The number of documents in the entire collection of documents
   

Keeping the above points in mind, following observations have been made as mentioned in this blog

• Higher size of the document = lower ranking
• More frequent the keyword matched in a document = higher ranking
• Deeper URL surf depth = lower ranking
• Authoritative pages in SP = higher ranking
• Default views seem to get ranked higher than individual item views
• File types seem to affect ranking (.doc > .txt for instance)
• Language seems to affect ranking, US-EN is always higher, even though your server installation may have french as it’s default language

How to solve “Unable to connect publishing custom string handler for output caching”

If you are getting “Unable to connect publishing custom string handler for output caching“ error in your event log then it is because of a custom web service you have installed on your Sharepoint server. Reason for this error is that you have a web part on your portal page which use the custom web service. Now, since Sharepoint uses output caching for the web pages to optimize the rendering experience and fast delivery of unchanged pages therefore, publishing infrastructure of Sharepoint tries to access the web service through your web part and due to any issue in your service, it starts generating this error.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, here is the solution:

Edit the web.config of custom web service (Please do not edit your Sharepoint Web application web.config) and make sure you have following under httpModules node which is located under system.web node. 

            <remove name=“PublishingHttpModule“ />