Surfing back home

in web.config set:

<SafeMode MaxControls=”50″ CallStack=”true“/>

<customErrors mode=”Off”>

The other day, I had an issue importing User Profiles and Properties from Active Directory.  In this case my MOSS server is on a child domain and it could import the child domain’s objects, but it could not import the objects from the parent domain.  Checking the log, I saw an error like the following.

spsimport://domain?$$dl$$

The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×8007054B)

I knew I had an issue with how the connections to the Active Directory was configured.  On the Manage Connections page, I had one entry for the child domain and one for the parent domain as expected.  After examining the parent domain’s connection carefully, I noticed that it auto discovered the domain name incorrectly.  In this scenario, the NT domain name is actually something like DOMAIN.COM and the Active Directory name for the domain is domain.local.  The name MOSS populated via Auto Discovery was just domain.  To resolve this, I created a new connection (because you can’t modify the domain of an existing one).  In this new connection, I simply added domain.local as my domain name and used default values for everything else.  I deleted the original connection and did the import again.  After checking the logs, I saw that everything imported correctly.

I’ve seen the question if it is possible to enable Audience Targetting on a SharePoint document library or list trough code, but I’ve never found an answer to it. But this weekend Ryan Ramcharan posted a solution in one of the SharePoint Forums posts. It looks like you can enable Audience Targeting programatically by adding the Target Audiences field as XML, here is a small code snippet:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite(http://mysite/))
{
    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
    {
        SPList list = web.Lists["Shared Documents"];

        XmlElement fldElement = new XmlDocument().CreateElement(”Field”);
        fldElement.SetAttribute(”ID”, “61cbb965-1e04-4273-b658-eedaa662f48d”);
        fldElement.SetAttribute(”Type”, “TargetTo”);
        fldElement.SetAttribute(”Name”, “TargetTo”);
        fldElement.SetAttribute(”DisplayName”, “Target Audiences”);
        fldElement.SetAttribute(”Required”, “FALSE”);

        list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(fldElement.OuterXml);
        list.Update();                  
    }
}

The strange thing is that this seems to only way to add the field, you can’t get a hold of the Target Audiences field through the Object Model. Thanks Ryan for posting this solution! And if you know a nicer way to accomplish this, feel free to drop a comment.

Thanks to Jan Tielens for the information

MOSS on a 2 server farm

• Create a local admin user on the SharePoint Server
• Create a database user with security admin and db creator roles.
• Now you can install MOSS on the SharePoint Server, but do not go to the configuration wizard!
• After the installation go to the bin directory in the ‘12 hyve’ with a command prompt and do the following things:
• psconfig.exe -cmd configdb -create -server [sqlserver name] -database [configdbnaam]  -user [local admin user op webserver] -password “[password]” -admincontentdatabase [admin content db naam] -dbuser [SQL accountname] -dbpassword “[password]“
• psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs -provision -port [port number for central admin] -windowsauthprovider onlyusentlm
• psconfig.exe -cmd helpcollections -installall
• psconfig.exe -cmd installfeatures
• psconfig.exe -cmd secureresources
• psconfig.exe -cmd services -provision ==> error about the search server email address
• iisreset
• Now in the Central Admin site (this is now created):
  • Configure WSS search service
  • Configure Office SharePoint search service
  • Create web application
  • Create site collection…etc.

using System;
using ASP = System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.Controls;

namespace WMDD.WebParts
{
    public class FormViewer : ASP.WebParts.WebPart
    {
        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            XmlFormView formView;
            formView = new XmlFormView();
            formView.Width = ASP.Unit.Percentage(100);
            formView.Height = ASP.Unit.Pixel(100);
            formView.XsnLocation = “Path to form XSN”;
            formView.ShowHeader = false;
            formView.ShowFooter = false;
   
            this.Controls.Add(formView);
            base.CreateChildControls();
        }    
    }
}

As I was playing with MOSS 2007 and ISA today, I wanted to publish a SharePoint subsite, without publishing the root site.
Since I’m not that experienced in ISA Server, I sometimes turned to Bart Bultinck (great guy, great systems engineer) on my MSN Messenger. He’s way more familiar and experienced with ISA Server.

So the situation is like this:

• In my Internal network you can access my portal (sub)site through http://moss/sharepoint
• In my external network you should be able to access  the portal through http://sharepoint/sharepoint
  (Sorry, my names aren’t that original, but who cares)

So how do you do it?

1. Don’t forget to add an extra Alternate Access Mapping in MOSS. So I added an Internet Zone “http://sharepoint”
2. Create a weblistener and a rule on your ISA Server to send through the SharePoint subsite.
3. And most importantly, do not only allow the path /sharepoint/*, but also the following:
   /_controltemplates/*
   /_layouts/*
   /_vti_bin/*
   /_wpresources/*

by Matthias 

When you develop actions (or workflows) that should be executed when an expiration policy occurs you need to test them, and that is problem in MOSS as the Expiration Policy job only is scheduled to run once a day. Probably you can’t sit around waiting all day for the job to run so you will have to force it’s execution.

My first though was that there ought to be some operation in STSADM.EXE that would support this. But I did not find any! If there are any operation for this please let me know!

I then reverted to building an application that will find the Expiration policy job and execute it. After looking through the classes and methods available this is the code I came up with:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics; 

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;

namespace RunExpirationPolicy
{
   class Program
   {
      static void Main(string[] args)
      {
         foreach (SPService srv in SPFarm.Local.Services)
         {
            foreach (SPJobDefinition job in srv.JobDefinitions)
            {
               string jobTitle = job.Title;

               if (jobTitle == “Expiration policy”)
               {
                  Trace.WriteLine(”***************** Start of execution for expiration policy job”);
                  job.Execute(Guid.Empty);
                  Trace.WriteLine(”***************** End of execution for expiration policy job”);
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }
}

I think it’s simple and quite obvious what it does. The only thing that is not obvious is why there is a Guid.Empty as parameter, it is there because it is required but only has meaning in a specific case which does not apply here (read more on MSDN).

As I use this for debugging my custom actions I have included Trace calls which log the start and end of the execution of the Expiration job. During my tests so far I have received all the traces made by my custom action within the Start and End traces, if this is always true I don’t know but it works fine for me.

by Matthias 

private string GetSmtpServer()
{
SPWebApplicationCollection spWebApplicationCollection = SPWebService.ContentService.WebApplications;
SPOutboundMailServiceInstance smtpServer = new SPOutboundMailServiceInstance();if (spWebApplicationCollection != null)
{
foreach (SPWebApplication spWebApplication in spWebApplicationCollection) {
smtpServer = spWebApplication.OutboundMailServiceInstance;
return smtpServer.Server.Address;
}
}
return string.Empty;
}

“The Microsoft Filter Pack for search has been released enabling critical search scenarios across a variety of Microsoft Search products including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express Edition, Exchange Server 2005, SQL Server 2005/2008, and Windows Desktop Search 3.1/4.0.

The Microsoft Filter Pack provides iFilters for the following file type extensions:

• .docx (Microsoft Office 2007 Word Document)
• .docm (Microsoft Office Word Macro-Enabled Document)
• .pptx (Microsoft Office 2007 PowerPoint Presentation)
• .xlsx (Microsoft Office 2007 Excel Worksheet)
• .xlsm (Microsoft Office Excel Macro-Enabled Worksheet)
• .xlsb (Microsoft Office Excel Binary Worksheet)
• .zip (WinZip File)
• .one (Microsoft Office OneNote Section)
• .vdx (Microsoft Office Visio Drawing)
• .vsd (Microsoft Office Visio Drawing)
• .vss (Microsoft Office Visio Stencil)
• .vst (Microsoft Office Visio Template)
• .vsx (Microsoft Office Visio Stencil)
• .vtx (Microsoft Office Visio Template)

You can run stsadm -o enumtemplates to verify that your template was added, and you’ll also notice that it’s been given a name like “_GLOBAL_#1″. If you’ve added a template to the Sharepoint Portal Server Template Gallery (#2 above) you’ll notice that this template is not listed when using stsadm.

Stsadm will not list the default templates either so I’ll list them here with Title and Name:

• Team Site, STS#0
• Blank Site, STS#1
• Document Workspace, STS#2
• Basic Meeting Workspace, MPS#0
• Blank Meeting Workspace, MPS#1
• Decision Meeting Workspace, MPS#2
• Social Meeting Workspace, MPS#3
• Multipage Meeting Workspace, MPS#4
• Business Activity Services Team Site, BAS#0
• SharePoint Portal Server Site, SPS#0
• SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space, SPSPERS#0
• SharePoint Portal Server My Site, SPSMSITE#0
• Contents area Template, SPSTOC#0
• Topic area template, SPSTOPIC#0
• News area template, SPSNEWS#0
• News Home area template, SPSNHOME#0
• Site Directory area template, SPSSITES#0
• SharePoint Portal Server BucketWeb Template, SPSBWEB#0
• Community area template, SPSCOMMU#0
• sitetemplate, _GLOBAL_#1 <- My custom template on the Virtual Server

To adjust the top level navigation in all My Sites do the following.1)go to the Central Administration and click on the SharedServices. 2)find the link Personalization site links under User Profiles and My Sites.
Add new links here that will be added to the top level navigation.Now you should target your audience. Create audiences or use existing ones.

For the rules.using (SPSite site = new SPSite(”http://someservername”))
    {
          ServerContext context = ServerContext.GetContext(site);
          AudienceManager AudMgr = new AudienceManager(context);           AudienceCollection ac = AudMgr.Audiences;
          Audience a = null;
          bool ruleListNotEmpty = false;           try
          {
               a = AudMgr.Audiences["Eddy and Ed Connection"];
          }
          catch (AudienceArgumentException ex)
           {
               //your exception handling code here
           }           ArrayList aRules = a.AudienceRules;
          if (aRules == null)
          {
              aRules = new ArrayList();
          }
          else
          {
              ruleListNotEmpty = true;
          }           try
          {
              //if the rule is not emply, start with a group operator ‘AND’ to append
             if (ruleListNotEmpty)
             {
                  aRules.Add(new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “AND”, null));
             }              AudienceRuleComponent r0 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “(”, null);
             aRules.Add(r0);              AudienceRuleComponent r1 = new AudienceRuleComponent(”FirstName”, “Contains”, “Eddy”);
             aRules.Add(r1);              AudienceRuleComponent r2 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “AND”, null);
             aRules.Add(r2);              AudienceRuleComponent r3 = new AudienceRuleComponent(”WorkEmail”, “Contains”, “ someservername.com”);
             aRules.Add(r3);              AudienceRuleComponent r4 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “)”, null);
             aRules.Add(r4);              AudienceRuleComponent r5 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “OR”, null);
             aRules.Add(r5);              AudienceRuleComponent r6 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “(”, null);
             aRules.Add(r6);              AudienceRuleComponent r7 = new AudienceRuleComponent(”FirstName”, “Contains”, “Ed”);
             aRules.Add(r7);              AudienceRuleComponent r8 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “AND”, null);
             aRules.Add(r8);              AudienceRuleComponent r9 = new AudienceRuleComponent(”WorkEmail”, “Contains”, “someexample.com”);
             aRules.Add(r9);              AudienceRuleComponent r10 = new AudienceRuleComponent(null, “)”, null);
             aRules.Add(r10);
             a.AudienceRules = aRules;
             a.Commit();
           }
           catch (AudienceException e)
           {
               //Your exception handling code here
           }
     }
}