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If you’ve tried to install the beta language packs on SharePoint 2010 RTM you may have run into some problems, or at least I did.  Whenever you try and change the language of your site or create a new sub-site in another language you are greeted with the famous “Unknown Exception Occurred”.  Alas, Microsoft has released updated language packs for both SharePoint 2010 Foundation and SharePoint 2010 Server which seems to fix this issue!

You should probably download and install the Windows Server 2008 R2 language packs first.  I believe this is required in for proper date and currency functionality.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Multilingual User Interface Language Packs

After installing these download either the SharePoint 2010 Foundation or the SharePoint 2010 Server language packs.

(note you have to select the language then click “Change” or else you’ll just download multiple copies of English…)

Language Packs for SharePoint Foundation 2010

2010 Server Language Packs for SharePoint Server 2010, Project Server 2010, Search Server 2010, and Office Web Apps 2010

Install all the language packs but do not run the configuration wizard until all are installed.  These must be installed on each web front end server running the SharePoint web application.

The configuration wizard will have to be run on each web front end after language pack install.

Have fun SharePoint peeps!

Tags: sharepoint 2010, language packs

I recently published a new series of blog posts on Fpweb.net’s blog about getting started with SSRS 08 and SharePoint 2007.  Once you have setup the infrastructure for the Reporting Services and SharePoint integration, it is quite easy to build tables and bar graphs on your data in SQL using Report Builder 2.0, and display it through your SharePoint 2007 portal.  These posts are based on my first experiences with this reporting solution.  I’m also excited about the next version of SQL 2008 R2 Reporting Services and SharePoint 2010.  SQL 2008 R2 has new spatial data types which allow you to store data like latitude and longitude within SQL.  Then you can use Report Builder 3.0 and Reporting Services to build a map view of the data.  This would be useful in a number of scenarios and extends the vast amount of solutions you can build on top of SharePoint.

Please visit my articles on the Fpweb.net blog:

Series – Surfacing Company Data with SharePoint and SSRS

Part 1 – It’s Time to Work Your SharePoint Ninja Magic

Part 2 – Configuring the Report Server

Part 3 – Configuring SSRS Add-In on the SharePoint Web Servers

Part 4 – Building a SQL Server Report Using Report Builder 2.0

Thank you for following!

Tags: sharepoint, sharepoint 2007, reporting services, ssrs, fpweb.net

I witnessed this error after a failed attempt to upgrade an ASP.Net MVC 1.0 application to ASP.Net MVC 2 using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.  When I closed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and tried to reopen it, the application crashed with the error “The application cannot start.

I found this Microsoft connect article which helped me solve the problem.  Microsoft Connect

Steps I took:

1. Open a command prompt

2. Type:  cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE”  (notice I’m using a x64 machine, the program files directory would be different on a 32 bit system)

3. Type: devenv /resetuserdata

This will reset your language preference that you select when you first load Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.  My custom fonts (sizes, colors, etc) were retained.

Now Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 loads again.  This is a bug that might be related to a raster font, but this should get you back up and working for now.

Tags: visual studio 2010, error, workaround

In the new service infrastructure powering SharePoint 2010, there are some significant changes and additions.

For starters these services are now called Service Applications and there is no Shared Services Provider (SSP).  Certain service instances can now be used across farms!

Configuration Flexibility

Web applications can be configured to only use a subset of the deployed services.

You can deploy multiple instances of the same service in a farm by giving the new service instances unique names.

You can share services across multiple web applications in a farm.

Services Can Even Be Shared Across Farms

Certain services that support sharing instances across farms can be run on a central farm in your company’s WAN and allow you to manage that service in one place.  A good example of this might be the User Profile Import service.  If your LOB system is located in one regional office you can run a specific instance of the Business Connectivity service for communication with that system locally and consume that data from other locations.

Service Application Architecture

These applications are deployed to IIS in a single web site (“SharePoint" Web Services”).  It is recommended to run this web site under one application pool for optimal performance.

Deploying Services

There are 3 ways to deploy services:

1. Selecting services when running the configuration wizard

2. Adding services through the Manage Service Applications page in Central Administration

3. Use power shell (replaces STSADM command line)

Service Descriptions

One question i have:  Is there still search functionality in SharePoint Foundation 2010?  I’m assuming the Search Service above refers to the MOSS Indexing style with crawl schedules and such.

Tags: sharepoint 2010, office 2010, sharepoint

Today with the kickoff to SharePoint Conference 2009, Microsoft has released a lot of new documentation.

There are many exciting features and improvements with this release!

Also exciting is that a public beta will be available in November!

MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256.aspx

Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=sharepoint%202010&DisplayLang=en

I will be blogging about my experiences with SharePoint 2010 in the coming months.

Tags: sharepoint 2010, sharepoint conference 2009, sharepoint, moss

Features

The library currently supports the following features:

Messaging

• Custom emoticons
• Offline messages (oim)
• Mobile messages (sms)
• Decorated text messages
• Nudges and typing messages
• Yahoo! messages (nudge, typing, text messaging)

Address Book

• Adding, removing and blocking contacts
• Creating, removing and changing contact groups
• Contact type recognition (passport, yahoo and phone)
• Saving contacts and deltas in encrypted addressbook files (.mcl)
• Convenient enumerating through contacts in allow, block, reverse, pending and forward lists
• Personal data of a contact / display image / personal message
• Event-based design to notify contact presence status changes
• Support for What's New service
• Support for Circle groups

Roaming Profile

• Privacy settings of the contact list owner
• Updating display name and personal message
• Saving display picture on MSN storage servers

Nameserver(NS) and Switchboard(SB)

• Signing in from multiple places (MPOP)
• Support for bots (Provisioned_Accounts)
• Hotmail mailbox status
• Notifications of new mail
• Setting presence status
• Request or receive conversations
• Multiple users in one conversation
• File transfers
• P2P framework support
• Flexible tracing of warnings and errors
• Proxy support and custom servers

How I Use It:

   1: public void SendIM(string contact)

   2:         {

   3:            var  messenger = new Messenger();  

   4:             var message = new TextMessage("This works!! Give Andy a dollar... Now please..");

   5:             messenger.Credentials.Account = "youraccountemailaddress";

   6:             messenger.Credentials.Password = "yourpassword";

   7:             messenger.Nameserver.BotMode = true;

   8:             messenger.Nameserver.AutoSynchronize = false;

   9:             messenger.Connect();

  10:             System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);

  11:  

  12:             try

  13:             {

  14:                 var conv = messenger.CreateConversation();

  15:                 conv.Switchboard.Invite(contact);

  16:                 System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);

  17:                 conv.Switchboard.SendTextMessage(message);

  18:             }

  19:             catch(NullReferenceException nullex)

  20:             {

  21:                  //fall back email or logging   

  22:             }

  23:             catch(Exception ex)

  24:             {

  25:                 //fall back email or logging

  26:             }

  27:  

  28:         }

If you have anymore experience with this library or Instant message protocol please comment and share any gotchas or ideas you might have that might help myself and the community.

Tags: msnpsharp, development, instant messaging, msn protocol, c#

With a background in ASP.Net web forms, the Html.CheckBox used with ASP.Net MVC did not behave how I thought it would.

For example when adding a checkbox to the View inside a table:

   1: <%=Html.CheckBox("cb" + item.player.idPlayer)%>

Firebug shows me this rendered in the html source of the page:

What is that hidden field for???

A developer on the Microsoft ASP.Net team said that this was by design so that we can properly assign a value of ‘false’ to an unchecked checkbox (link). 

I’m assuming this was the fix for the issue in the MVC 1.0 RC builds where a null value was being returning for unchecked checkboxes.

But in ASP.Net MVC 1.0, here is what the Request.Form values are (notice all checkbox inputs are listed with either a value of ‘false’ or ‘true’):

So in my case to loop through the returned inputs and grab the Player ID’s which have been checked:

Here is the controller action code to look for checked checkboxes (from Andrey Tkach on Stack Overflow):

   1: var selectedPlayerIds = new List<int>();

   2:             IEnumerable<Player> players;

   3:  

   4:             foreach (string key in Request.Form)

   5:             {

   6:                 var checkBox = String.Empty;

   7:                 if(key.StartsWith("cb"))

   8:                 {

   9:                     checkBox = Request.Form["" + key];

  10:                     if (checkBox != "false")

  11:                     {

  12:                         int id = Convert.ToInt32(key.Remove(0, 2));

  13:                         selectedPlayerIds.Add(id);

  14:                     }

  15:                 }

  16:             }

I am now able to use these playerID’s for interaction with the repository and perform interesting logic.

Tags: asp.net mvc 1.0, web development, checkbox

Javascript does not have a built in way to get querystring values easily in name, value pairs like ASP.Net.

So how do i get the “id” value in the URL  www.myurl.com/default.aspx?id=12345  ??

Here’s a javascript function which I found on multiple sites that works well.

   1: function GetQuerystringParam(name, url) {

   2:     name = name.replace(/[\[]/, "\\\[").replace(/[\]]/, "\\\]");

   3:     var regexS = "[\\?&]" + name + "=([^&#]*)";

   4:     var regex = new RegExp(regexS);

   5:     if (typeof (url) == 'undefined') url = window.location.href;

   6:     var results = regex.exec(url);

   7:     if (results == null)

   8:         return "";

   9:     else

  10:         return results[1];

  11: }

If you want to just use the browser’s current URL as the target querystring, see an example below.

   1: var value = GetQuerystringParam("id");    

Enjoy!

Tags: javascipt, querystring, asp.net, web development

Problem

If you are seeing 401.1 unauthorized event log entries by the SharePoint Gatherer in your event log, this article may be what you've been googling for.

Are you able to browse to your sharepoint site from the server logged in as the search crawling account?  No luck?  Keep reading.

Reason

With the Windows Server 2003 SP1 ( or possibly just the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1), Microsoft introduced a new security feature that checks for loopbacks (making calls to web applications locally from thet server).  If your search service is running on the same server that is hosting your web applications (which is best practice for indexing speed), you'll most likely recieve this unauthorized error.  You may also see this error for any custom applications which use the SharePiont web services locally. This security fix is meant to block malicious applications from infultrating your web sites from within, which is a good fix in my opinion.

How to I get around this 401 unauthorized then?

Microsoft recommends two fixes.  Both of them are registry modifications.

One turns off the Loopback check altogether which shouldn't be done on external facing production servers for obvious reasons.  The other is to specify the sites that allow loopback from the server.

Here's the instructions for the registry modifications required for both methods:

MS KB Article 896861

Tags: sharepoint, wss 3.0, sharepoint search, disableloopbackcheck

Microsoft SharePoint (WSS 3.0) search is probably one of the most common points of failure and source of support tickets for our customers.

Here are some of the major points to check when troubleshooting this service.

1. Make sure the content database is assigned an indexer.

      Open SharePoint Central Administration > Application Management > Content Databases

      Select your web application if it is not already selected.

      Click on the content database. 

      Make sure that the Search Server dropdown has the servername selected which is running the WSS Search Service.

2. Make sure you have implemented the DisableLoopbackCheck registry entry.

     Check out this blog post.

3. Make sure your search service is running as a domain account and that the account credentials were entered correctly (with DOMAIN\serviceaccount) in Central Administration.

4. Make sure your alternate access mappings in the default zone are accessible from the server.

5. If using forms authentication, use windows authentication in the default zone, and then extend the web application to the internet zone which uses forms. 

6. If pdf files are not being indexed correctly on 64bit systems, there may be a registry entry that you are missing.

    Note there is an extra registry GUID change for the 64bit Adobe I filter.  Here'a a link to a well written post : Here

7. After all these are verified and\or changed to the correct configurations, run an stsadm full crawl.

    This is performed by opening a command promt  on the server running the Windows SharePoint Services Search Service then:

    Type cd C:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin

    Hit Enter

    Type stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart

    Hit Enter

    Your content should begin the indexing process

    Check the event lot to see if the 401 unauthorized messages have gone away.

I hope this helps you guys out there in the field.

Tags: sharepoint, wss 3.0, sharepoint search