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SPC 08: Migrating SPD Workflows to Visual Studio

The best session so far at SPC 08 was Todd Bleeker 's inspirational talk on the daunting task of migrating SharePoint Designer workflows to Visual Studio. Often customers want to take a specific SPD workflow and use it on different lists - but as most of you know, this is not possible because an SPD workflow is tied to one list, and one list only. If you need to attach a workflow to several lists in a site collection, you are forced to build the workflow from scratch in Visual Studio. Until now. Todd Bleeker went through the process of migrating a simple SPD workflow to Visual Studio. And it's difficult! And time-consuming. Basically, you need to go through a long process of importing files, renaming variables, attaching new dll's, changing XML and loads more. It's not for the faint of heart and at the moment you're not likely to be using this method for other than proof-of-concept projects. However, Todd is working with Paul Schaeflein and Mindsharp to automate the tedious migration process and he indicated that their efforts may result in a turn-key product sometime in the future. The one great use of the migration method is prototyping, i.e. you can let your users develop a workflow in SharePoint Designer with most of the functionality added. All the kinks can be ironed out in this phase and once the user is happy with the workflow, the developer can take over and migrate the workflow to Visual Studio. The advantage of this approach is that you free up developer...

VSeWSS1.1

Die Visual Studio 2005 Extensions für Windows SharePoint Services gibt es jetzt in einer aktualisierten Version 1.1 New to Version 1.1 Support for "Web Solution Package" editing View and edit all solution content (no more hidden generated content Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Back to the Future...

Great treat this week. Visual Studio 2008 has RTM'd and is waiting for you! The future has made the effort of coming all the way back here to good old 2007. So if I am using it, does that mean I am writing code in the future? Get 2008 in 2007, here is the info from the visual studio site : The Wait for Visual Studio 2008 is Over! On Monday, Nov. 19 , Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing (RTM). With more than 250 new features,Visual Studio 2008 includes significant enhancements in every edition, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System. Developers of all levels – from hobbyists to enterprise development teams – now have a consistent, secure and reliable solution for developing applications for the latest platforms: the Web, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office system, and beyond. Learn more about Visual Studio 2008 . MSDN Subscribers: Get Visual Studio 2008 Now Download Trial Editions of Visual Studio 2008 Download Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions Download the .NET Framework 3.5 Have fun with all that 3.5 and WPF goodness! Cross-posted from my MSDN blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/jamesway Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

TechEd 2007 EMEA Key Note

Some areas from the Key Note that may have an impact on SharePoint in the future. Microsoft Sync Framework - CTP available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/bb821992.aspx Will this integrate into SharePoint? talking SharePoint content offline Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks
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Discussion: Custom Field Controls vs. Custom Web Parts

I watched a video with Andrew Connell, and it was brought to my attention that Custom Field Controls may be more appropriate than custom web parts in certain situations... One question that I have is if the tool pane is accessible for the end user when dealing with a field control... Can the design set configuration data from sharepoint designer? Please post any thoughts you may have. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Custom Web Part Building: State Management Tips and Tricks

When building custom web parts its essential to understand when controls will contain thier values and when they don't and how to keep variables that will contain their values throughout the web part life cycle. Especially if you would like to dynamically load one control based on another controls input. 1. In CreateChildControls, No control will contain a value, not even hidden fields. This eliminates some uses of a common practice of utilizing hidden field to maintain viewstate. 2. ViewState Parameters are great for maintaining values throughout the web part lifecycle. Initialize them in the constructor of a web part to avoid null errors. Initializing a view state parameter: ViewState["parameter1"] = ""; Retrieving a value from view state: string this = ViewState["parameter1"].toString(); 3. If you would like to maintain a web parts state while navigation persists in your website, you can utilize session state variables with the following code: Adding a variable to session state: HttpContext.Current.Session.Add("variablename1", "value1"); Retrieving a variable from session state: writer.Write("'" + HttpContext.Current.Session["variablename1"] + "'"); Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Custom Web Part Code: Adding the default doc lib menu to a custom web part

So I found a way to add the default drop down menu to the items of a custom web part control. Its pretty convoluted, so if you form a more direct way let me know. See code below: This Template is needed to be instantiated, but we don't render it... (lil trick) msaListMenu = new MenuTemplate(); msaListMenu.ID = "DocLibMenu"; I use this menu column to expose multiples values I need for the menu: SPMenuField msaColMenu = new SPMenuField(); msaColMenu.HeaderText = "Name"; msaColMenu.TextFields = "FileLeafRef, ID, COUID"; //msaColMenu.TextFormat = "{0}/{1}/{2}"; msaColMenu.MenuTemplateId = "DocLibMenu"; //msaColMenu. msaColMenu.NavigateUrlFields = "FileLeafRef";//Client_x0020_Name_x0020_2"; msaColMenu.NavigateUrlFormat = SPContext.Current.Web.Url+"/[Doc Library Name]/1/{0}";//1 msaColMenu.TokenNameAndValueFields = "EDIT=ID,NAME=Title,TYPE=DocIcon,REF=FileLeafRef"; msaColMenu.SortExpression = "Title"; msaGrid.Columns.Add(msaColMenu); Javascript I implanted directly after the rendering of the SPGridView Control (this javascript manipulates the menu field that we put in our SPGridView control and gives it the identical html that the default web parts use for their menus: string transplantMenuFunction = ""; transplantMenuFunction += "<script>\n"; transplantMenuFunction += "function transplantMenu(){\n"; transplantMenuFunction += " var error;\n";...

MOSS 2007: Is collaboration for everyone?

I met with the SharePoint Users Group of Kansas City today. And they brought up an interesting topic. And all in all it makes sense. Should IT release SharePoint in the hands of the end users... I would say yes, but your managers and execs would probably say no. Like the mindsharp people were saying SharePoint is a tool for their employees to communicate with other employees... and everytime you attempt to increase the communication in the workplace there is hesitation by management. The oldest MCT in the biz, a mindsharp trainer, was recalling the days when companies were first thinking about placing phones at employees desks... and then when email was to hit the desktop with Outlook... Each time a tool becomes available to enhance communication among employees, management wants to have their hands in it, with an attempt to control and police it. However, like with email and the phone, SharePoint will produce more results when it is placed in the hands of the employees. Each individual employee having their own mysite, and each dept having its own site with subsites. There will be a learning curve, but someday it will be an everyday utility. There is also another side to SharePoint, a development environment for web based applications. Also SharePoint can be used as a WUI, web user interface, (Intranet) for various web applications you already have in place, or develop new Web Part centric applications. Your applications, now housed in SharePoint, will inherit SharePoint's...

Canceling Check-out Event in Lists and Document Libraries returns an Error Message

With the new event model in WSS 3.0 we have the ability to cancel some user actions on the behalf of synchronous events like ItemUpdating or ItemDeleting. To do this you have to implement an event handler: Create a class library with a class that inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.SPItemEventReceiver. And then override the desired event methods (ItemDeleting, ItemUdating, …). Now you have to register your event handler within SharePoint. You can do this programmatically through the object model or declaratively through a feature for a specific list type or a specific content type. Details are well documented in the WSS SDK. There is also a nice book excerpt about the whole story of event handling in WSS: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-306329.html To cancel an event you can use the following code in your event handler: public override void ItemCheckingOut( SPItemEventProperties properties) { properties.Status = SPEventReceiverStatus .CancelWithError; properties.ErrorMessage = "Operation not allowed because..." ; properties.Cancel = true ; } With ItemDeleting or ItemUpdating this is working perfectly: the user action will be canceled and the user will be presented the custom error message "Operation not allowed …". But with ItemCheckingOut is something wrong. The user action (Check-out) is canceled but the user will be presented the following system error message instead of our custom error message: "Attempted to read or write protected memory. This...

Dynamic Site intergrated with a Database, List, or BDC Data

Use web parts that either actions(BDC Data), custom columns(List), or spgridview control(Database), to establish links that provide a query variable to your dynamic page. On your dynamic page, create a web part or embed server side code that creates a folder in each of your lists, document libraries, or wikki libraries. Make sure that these folder are also assigned an id value to an id field(only can be do programmatically, no default UI for this). Use the query variable given to arrange for a rootfolder query variable that navigates list web parts to their respective folders. Modify any extraneous links through javascript, utilize cookies and redirects with a custom web part to hold id values despite application page navigation. Well, I hope this helps, and good luck in the world of sharepoint! Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

My First SharePoint Blog

Hey all, I am an IT Consultant with Levi, Ray, and Shoup, Inc. I attended their Portal University in July - October '05 and have worked with LRS as a SharePoint Consultant ever since. I have been on numerous successful engagements deploying SharePoint 2003, MOSS 2007, InfoPath 2003 and 2007. I have a strong foundation in many languages including but not limited to SQL, C#, XML, XSLT, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, ASP.NET. I have worked with SharePoint...

MOSS - Visual Studio Development (What works for me...)

So I've played around with the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services, v1.0 for quite some time now. While the concept is extremely useful, the release is not. It has MANY problems. So I've looked for different workflows for developing against MOSS. The following tools enable me to create a fairly robust MOSS development environment, without the headache related to the MS VSeWSS tool. Can't wait until they update...
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