SharePoint Single Sign-On Resources

Support for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Without SP1 Ending in January

Microsoft is ending support for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 installations that do not have Service Pack 1 installed as of January 13, 2009. To be sure your systems stay in a supported state, it is recommended that you test and deploy Service Pack 1 for both WSS and MOSS before this date arrives.

More details from Microsoft can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps#Office

 

SharePoint Kerberos SPN Creation Tool

Daniel Pollard over at http://www.httpcode.com created a fantastic new web based utility to help ease the pain with setting up Kerberos for SharePoint.

You enter in some information regarding your SharePoint configuration, and presto, out comes the SPNs that you need to configure for Kerberos.

image

More information can be found here: http://httpcode.com/blogs/PermaLink,guid,9223bc52-aa2f-489c-9fdc-fd0debac9c30.aspx

And the tool itself can be found here: http://httpcode.com/tools/spntool.aspx

 

Recommended Additions for SharePoint 2007

I have had the pleasure to be involved with many SharePoint projects, and more often than not with those projects, there is a need to install or develop additional functionality which enhances the end user, administrator, or developer experience with the product. Below are several tools which I find myself installing and/or recommending on those projects, which do just that, without having to re-invent the wheel.

If you have any additions, please leave a comment about them, and I will keep this list going.

Backup/Recovery

  • Microsoft IT Site Delete Capture LE 1.0
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/governance/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=14351
    • Description: “Microsoft Site Delete Capture LE version 1.0 is an Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 solution package that when deployed to a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 server farm enables administrators to create a snapshot of site collections and Webs when they are deleted through the SharePoint user interface, the SharePoint Administration Tool, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.”

Administration

  • U2U List Properties Feature Package
    • Link: http://www.u2u.be/res/Tools/SharePointListProperties.aspx
    • Description: “The U2U List Properties Package has been developed to ease the work of a SharePoint 2007 developer. It adds an hyperlink to the List Settings page displaying a page with detailed information about the list properties.”
  • U2U Site Properties Feature Package
    • Link: http://www.u2u.be/res/Tools/SharePointSiteProperties.aspx
    • Description: “The U2U Site Properties Package has been developed to ease the work of a SharePoint 2007 developer. It adds an hyperlink to the Site Settings page displaying a page with detailed information about the site properties.”
  • SharePoint ULS Viewer
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/ULSViewer
    • Description: “A windows application for viewing SharePoint ULS log files more easily. Supports filtering and easy viewing of data.”
  • WSS / MOSS Log File Reader
  • SharePoint Access Checker Web Part
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/AccessChecker
    • Description: “The Access Checker Web Part is a Windows Sharepoint Services Web Part, for use within Windows Sharepoint Services v3 and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007, that displays a tree view showing permissions on objects for a user scoped to a Site hierarchy. It also has a second mode which will show the permission inheritance of objects within a Site hierarchy.”
  • SharePoint Manager 2007
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/spm
    • Description: “The SharePoint Manager 2007 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties (at your own risk). This is a very powerfull tool for developers that like to know what the SharePoint holds of secrets.”
  • SharePoint SUSHI
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/sushi
    • Description: “SharePoint SUSHI is a powerful, user-friendly utility enabling you to accomplish common administrative tasks. You can think of SUSHI as a Swiss army knife for SharePoint.
      SUSHI = SharePoint Utility with a Smart, Helpful Interface”
  • STSADM Custom Extensions

Web Parts and Other Features

  • SharePoint 2007 Features
    • Link: http://www.codeplex.com/features
    • Description: “This is a project for SharePoint 2007 Features. Features add new functionality to a SharePoint 2007 farm, site collection, or site. This project will create Features to address deficiencies in SharePoint 2007 or add new capabilities. You should understand a little about Features before trying these out. The packages here use batch files or WSP files to install the Features. After installation, be sure to activate the Features to see them in SharePoint.”

Usability

  • SharePoint Explorer Client 2.0 – Community Edition
    • Link: http://www.adselfservicesuite.com/SharePointExplorerClient.aspx
    • Description: “The Dot Net Factory’s SharePoint Explorer is an IE add-in providing end-users and administrators the richest possible SharePoint usage and navigation experience for all SharePoint 2003 and 2007 versions. SharePoint Explorer provides a friendly tree-based interface allowing novice and expert users alike to see all SharePoint sites and content at a glance while providing right-click menus for all common functions.”

The descriptions used above in quotes were copied from their original source (link provided above each), and are © their original authors.

Expand/Collapse Web Parts in WSS v2

While I was working on some customizations for a client’s Business Portal v3 (for Dynamics SL) installation yesterday, I needed to save some real estate within the Timecard Entry screen. We moved and customized the tmtce30.asp file to display the timecard selection blocks horizontally, and moved the web part above the Timecard Entry screen.
 
Now that we had more real estate to work with on the timecard, I also was looking for a way to minimize the Timecard List web part, without using the Minimize feature of the web part.
 
After a bit of searching, I came across this great post at the Path to SharePoint blog: http://pathtosharepoint.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/expandcollapse-buttons-for-your-web-parts/, which was built for 2007, but, I could find a way to do this in v2, as with v2, we do not have the _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push() function available to us.
 
What I came up with is attached at the bottom of this post. A few changes were made, and there is also some commented out code in there from my attempts to get this to work. In this time card screen, we are specifying a width of the web parts on the page, so utilizing an image is not an option, as it creates a two-line (and ugly) title header for each web part.
 
The functionality that I had modified in the original code, is to push this into the onload events, without overwriting any onload code (I found that code somewhere, but unfortunately did not save the URL… once I get it, I will update this posting with the proper props!). Also instead of using the built-in _layouts/images/[plus|minus].gif images, the function is incorporated into a SPAN around the title, so clicking on the tile itself will expand and collapse the web part.
 
As for usage, just drop this file anywhere on the web part page (via importing the web part), and you should be good to go.
 
Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any issues.
 

http://cid-b06529fd3fc75473.skydrive.live.com/embedrowdetail.aspx/SharePoint/Expand|_Collapse|_Web|_Parts|_v2.dwp

 

The DEX_ROW_ID column

Just wanted to do a quick post about this blog posting I ran across today, which provides useful information regarding the DEX_ROW_ID column that is on all tables within Dynamics GP. http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/2008/12/dexrowid-column.html
 
This blog has a wealth of information about Dynamics GP as well, so if it is a topic you are interested in, I suggest you check it out: http://dynamicsgpblogster.blogspot.com/
 

 

December Cumulative Update Packages Release for WSS v3 and MOSS 2007

Yesterday, the SharePoint Product Group announced the release of the December Cumulative Update Packages for WSS v3 and MOSS 2007. This post, as well as further information, installation instructions, and download links can be found here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/17/announcing-december-cumulative-update-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx

 

Free Date Picker for Advanced Search in MOSS/WSS from BA-Insight

Just received a notification that BA-Insight is offering a free AJAX based date picker extension for the Advanced Search web part in MOSS/WSS.

Go here for more information and to download: http://www.ba-insight.net/datepickerregistration.aspx

Expanding Virtual Hard Disk Size

I do most of my development between one of several local virtual machines. Today I ran into an issue, where I was installing the Infrastructure Updates to my environment on one of my machines, and low and behold, it ate up all but a few hundred megs of space on the drive after the SP1 installations and the WSS infrastructure update. The bad news – Infrastructure updates cannot be uninstalled, so I needed to get the MOSS Infrastructure update done to actually be able to use SharePoint at all on this development machine.

My host machine is running Vista, so, that ruled out this handy utility from Xtralogic (http://www.xtralogic.com/), as it does not support Vista.

I did come across this one however, which is even better, as it’s free: http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

I found a great article explaining how to get it done here: http://kb.dutchalps.com/microsoftvirtualpc.htm

“Local Drafts” folder location

I’ve been asked this question a lot, and thought I would post a quick note about it. When you are editing a file within SharePoint, and asked if you want to save it in your local drafts folder, this is what it means – in your user profile directory, under your documents, there is a folder, or one that will automatically get created, called SharePoint Drafts. For example, my local drafts folder on my Vista machine is:

C:\Users\gvarosky\Documents\SharePoint Drafts