Speaking at Boston SharePoint Saturday

February 17, 2009 Leave a comment

As I had previously posted, SharePoint Saturday is coming to Boston, and I am pleased to announce that I have been accepted as a speaker for the event! There are some great speakers and sessions lined up for this free one-day conference, and I am excited to be a part of it. If you are not already signed up to go, and will be in the area on March 14th, 2009, I highly suggest you do so here.

I will be delivering a session entitled ‘Introduction to Developing Custom Actions within SharePoint’. This will be a level 200 session, as all of the demonstrations will be built in the session utilizing Visual Studio. Knowledge of the product, SharePoint 12 hive, Features, etc., is a bonus to have going into this session, however, not a pre-requisite. And there will be ample amounts of XML, as well as a little bit of code.

Here is the session summary (as it appears on the SharePoint Saturday site) –

“Custom Actions control features in SharePoint such as the Edit Content Block, the Site Actions menu, toolbars, and the links within the Site Settings page. Learn how to leverage Custom Actions to extend the SharePoint User Interface. This session will describe the basics of Custom Actions, a demonstration to build one or more and apply them to a site in SharePoint, as well as provide resources for additional information.”

I am planning 4 demonstrations for this presentation currently, so show different aspects of how the different Custom Actions elements within SharePoint can be used to modify existing elements and create new elements.

Once this event is over, I will post slide decks, as well as recordings/screen captures of the demonstrations to by blog here, in case you were unable to make it, or unable to attend the session.

For more information on resources for developing Custom Actions for SharePoint, take a look at one of my previous posts which includes an aggregation of great resources available on the subject.

Links
Session Information – http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston/Pages/meeting.aspx?meetingid=15 
SharePoint Saturday – Boston – http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston/
Registration for the Event – https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=135382

 

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Tracing Service lost trace events

February 12, 2009 5 Comments

If you are receiving this error within the ULS logs in SharePoint 2007 (x:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS\), and the error is as follows:

Tracing Service lost trace events.  Current value n.

(Where n is a numeric value) – the best course of action to take to remedy this is to restart the Windows SharePoint Services Tracing service within the services console on your Windows server.

Usually if you are seeing this error in the ULS logs, you are most likely not seeing any other log entries at all. The ULS logging service is basically just posting a message to the logs saying that it is having issues hooking up with the service that SharePoint speaks to.

This is a short post, however, it should get you back on track. As I research this issue further, I will update this blog entry with possible causes and additional solutions for resolving this issue. This is definitely not the first time I have run into the issue, but, I wanted to at least make a quick posting about it to share the “quick fix” for now.

 

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SharePoint Best Practices Conference – Day 2 Recap

February 4, 2009 Leave a comment

Day 2 at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference was another great one. Today, the tracks I attended were more on the technical and development side of things, starting off the day with the first part of Best Practices for Implementing Kerberos in a SharePoint Environment (and ended the day today with the second part of this session), put on by Spence Harbar and Bob Fox, the main takeaway from these sessions was this – kerberos configuration is very simple. This was a refreshing take on kerberos, as if you have ever attempted to setup kerberos (and not just for SharePoint), there is a lot of information out there that can be confusing, and down right wrong. Spence should be posting the slide deck today from their two sessions up on his blog at some point, so keep an eye out there for it.

The second session of the day was Data Protection, Recovery, and Availability, put on once again by Mike Watson and Ben Curry. This session not only focused on DR and HA as it relates to SharePoint, but also DR and HA in general. A highly informative session with some great information pruned from the best of the best in DR (Mike Watson will be teaching the DR portion of the Microsoft Certified Master program for SharePoint).

After a bit of a break for lunch, I attended the Agile SharePoint development with Scrum session hosted by Andrew Woodward of 21apps.com. This session was an excellent and informative introduction into Agile development practices using the Scrum methodology.

Another short break, and I was found attending Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Lifecycle Management Demofest: Methodologies, Tools, and Best Practices hosted by Rick Taylor. Rick reviewed some great tools for use with WSS and MOSS for managing, monitoring, and configuring SharePoint environments that he has worked on with Microsoft.

And as mentioned at the beginning of this post, my day ended with the second part of the Kerberos session. Now, I will be heading out shortly from my hotel to join the speakers and attendees of the conference at the unofficial SharePoint By Day, SharePint By Night event @ the La Jolla Brew House in, La Jolla, orchestrated by Andrew Woodward.

 

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SharePoint Best Practices Conference – Day 1 Recap

February 3, 2009 Leave a comment

I am in beautiful, sunny San Diego this week for the 2009 US SharePoint Best Practices Conference. Yesterday the festivities were kicked off by an introduction to the conference by Bill English of Mindsharp, and then Joel Oleson started things off on the right foot with a short version of his session to be held later in the day “What the SharePoint Owners Manual Won’t Tell You… Avoiding Failed Deployments and Chaos”. It was a great start to the conference.

Following the keynote and introduction to the conference, I attended Mark Schneider’s session – “How to Develop a Taxonomy Plan”. Mark’s session was highly informative, and a great introduction to taxonomy.

I took the time around lunch to mingle with some of the exhibitors at the conference, and to get a read of what hot new products are being offered for SharePoint, and to meet some great people. There are some great 3rd party tools out there that I had no idea existed, and hope to leverage some of those in the future to fill some gaps that are inherently within the product.

I then attended Mike Watson (The SharePoint Mad Scientist) and Ben Curry’s session regarding Capacity Planning and Performance. These guys definitely know their stuff, and I took away quite a bit from the session.

To end the sessions for the day, I went to two back-to-back sessions by Bob Mixon regarding Taxonomy, and how to relate and apply taxonomy to SharePoint – “Learn Why Taxonomies are the Most Important Part of any Document or Information Asset Management System”. Once again, as seems to be the theme, I learned a lot from one of the masters, and enjoyed the sessions.

All of the presenters here definitely know their material inside and out, and are the best in their respective sections of the “SharePoint Pie”

I am part of the way through day 2 of the conference, and am excited for the rest of the sessions I will be attending today and tomorrow.

 

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Fixing PNG Transparency Issues for Internet Explorer (SharePoint Edition!)

January 29, 2009 4 Comments

Portable Network Graphic (PNG) files have an issue when rendered in IE 5.5 up through version 6, have an issue with displaying transparency, and renders the transparency in gray.

Microsoft has a KB article regarding the issue here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294714however, this requires you to enclose the PNG within a DIV, and you would need to do this for each one… there are more elegant and efficient ways to accomplish this.

While this is not a SharePoint specific issue, my world centers around SharePoint solutions, and I run into this often. The best resource for this fix out there is located here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/index.htm

There are numerous ways to get this into SharePoint, to name a few…

  • Create a Content Editor Web Part, either link to pngfix.js or place the code within the web part on the page which contains one or many PNG files with transparency.

Download here:
http://cid-b06529fd3fc75473.skydrive.live.com/embedrow.aspx/SharePoint/Internet|_Explorer|_PNG|_Transparency|_Fix|_Web|_Part.dwp

  • Link to the pngfix.js, or just put the contents of the JavaScript file within a master page (which is what we’ve done at our website – www.grace-hunt.com) which can be seen if you view the source of any page within our website
    image

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SharePoint Saturday – Boston

January 28, 2009 Leave a comment

For those of you in the Boston area, SharePoint Saturday will be coming to the Microsoft Offices in Waltham on March 14th. I’ve heard plenty of great things about the first event of its kind that took place in Virginia Beach, and am hearing great things about the upcoming events in New York City (2/21/) and Kansas City (2/7).

More information as it becomes available, as well as registration when it opens can be accessed at the Boston SharePoint Saturday website here: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston/Pages/default.aspx

 

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Microsoft Business Intelligence Strategy Update

January 26, 2009 Leave a comment

On Friday, the Microsoft SharePoint Product Group announced on their blog, that PerformancePoint Server is being rolled into MOSS 2007 licensing, further integrating Microsoft’s BI products into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

From the post: “Microsoft is removing the barriers for customers who want to deploy a complete Business Intelligence solution, leveraging their existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel. Customers with SharePoint ECAL SA will have rights to deploy PerformancePoint Server today. PerformancePoint’s scorecard capabilities are certified by the Balanced Scorecard Institute/Palladium, building on the capabilities first introduced in Business Scorecard Manager. This means companies can implement their scorecards, following any methodology they choose, and accurately reflect this with their company strategy. The contextual dashboards allow organizations to create data-rich views that are interactive and change based on the users context. Organizations can create rich views that combine Excel, Excel Services, SharePoint Lists, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and relational information to accurately reflect the business, measure the right information, and quickly understand changes in real-time.”

This is exciting news for Business Intelligence and SharePoint. For more information, check out the post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-business-intelligence-strategy-update-and-sharepoint.aspx

 

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SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego

January 23, 2009 Leave a comment

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will be attending the SharePint event taking place at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference in San Diego, but I will also be attending the main event, the SharePoint Best Practices Conference.

I am looking forward to attending and going to soak up some of the loads of information to be absorbed at the conference, as well as meet and mingle with other like-minded individuals that will be presenting and attending. To see all the great sessions that will be taking place, be sure to visit the agenda page at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference website by visiting this link: http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/agenda

Be sure to keep an eye on my blog here during and after the conference, as I will be reporting back with information regarding the sessions and the event itself during my time out there.

I look forward to seeing some of you there!

 

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CustomAction Development Resources for SharePoint

January 22, 2009 Leave a comment

A common development task is building out custom actions for SharePoint. What is a custom action you ask? Per Microsoft: “A custom action represents a link, toolbar button, menu item, or any control that can be added to a toolbar or menu that a user sees. Custom actions can be bound to list type, content type, file type, or programmatic identifier (ProgID).” (source)

A good example of a custom action feature in SharePoint is a recently released project to CodePlex – GraceHunt.SharePoint.Features.SiteActionsRecycleBin, which adds a link to the Site Actions menu on any site collection it is activated in, to provide a link to the recycle bin of the current site.

The reasoning behind this post was to list a few great resources which help in building custom actions for SharePoint.

John Holliday has a great (sortable and exportable to excel) list of all of the custom action identifiers, available here: http://johnholliday.net/resources/customactions.html, which lists the Id, GroupId, Location, Sequence, RegistrationType and RegistrationId of all of the Custom Actions built into SharePoint.

You can also build custom action features to hide elements within SharePoint menus, toolbars, and link menus. John Holliday has a great article on locating custom action identifiers to allow you figure out how to find the identifiers for installed custom actions within SharePoint, available here: http://johnholliday.net/post/2007/10/28/How-to-find-lt3bCustomActiongt3b-identifiers.aspx

This can also be useful to assist in figuring out the sequence number for installing your custom action feature in SharePoint, so you can insert it before or after other items that are currently there.

And last, but certainly not least, MSDN has some excellent resources regarding custom actions

I hope this is useful information, and if you have any resources that should be added here, just leave a comment below, and I will add it to the list.

 

[Updated 1.28.09]
Over at SharePointDevWiki.com, there is a growing amount of information regarding custom actions.

Jan Tielens has a good article on Adding Breadcrumb Navigation to Application Pages in SharePoint Central Administration.

André Vala wrote a great post about CustomActions as well, including some great in-depth information on each of the attributes and rights for actions in his post SharePoint 2007 Deployment: Custom Action Features

 

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Visio Resources for SharePoint

January 21, 2009 1 Comment

As a SharePoint Solutions developer, I am often creating Visio drawings for clients and make use of several resources out there to generate SharePoint-centric Visio documents. This blog posting is more of a placeholder for myself, as well as other consultants here at Grace-Hunt, as a reference for finding Visio related SharePoint stencils, shapes, drawings and more for SharePoint.

If you have found some useful resources out there that are not listed here, please leave a comment below and I will update this posting with those links.

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