Thursday, September 29, 2005

Create a list in a portal area based on a list template

It is a common requirement to take SharePoint templates from one site to another. But this is not easy as it sounds in SharePoint Portal.

I created a survey in Portal home and saved it as a template. Then I created a separate area to hold the survey. But when I try to drag and drop the survey to the created area, I couldn’t find it. This is because the new area is behaving as an isolated site.

Following article explains how to tackle this situation.

Create a list in a portal area based on a list template

Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2 (SP2) contains stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update.

This service pack includes updates previously released for Windows SharePoint Services:

Windows SharePoint Services SP2 will install even if a publicly available update or service pack has already been installed on your computer.

SP2 also includes stability improvements developed as a result of user input from the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis in Windows SharePoint Services and from Microsoft Product Support feedback.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Melbourne SPS User Group - 29th September

This is to remind you that the Melbourne SharePoint User Group meeting is taking place on Thursday, 29th September at Microsoft Melbourne (Level 9,Como Office Tower, 644 Chapel St South Yarra) starting at 6pm.

Gavin Wilson from HP will be joined by others from HP to present an overview of their usage and development of a SharePoint system. This will be a good opportunity to see how other businesses have utilized SharePoint to support their organization.

Beer and Pizzas will be provided, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Send Mail Menu Item Web Part

Drop-down menus in Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enable actions that relate to a specific document in a document library to be viewed and invoked. This paper shows how these document context menus can be extended to add custom menu items. The document first explains how SharePoint document library context menus work, and then demonstrates how custom menu items can be added.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2005

LCID Chart

Hi Guys

I was playing around customizing a look and feel of a Data View web part. The web part was reading data from a list and displaying the information. It contains a Date Time column that was displaying its information in American date formate. As display below,

select="ddwrt:FormatDate(string(@ows_EventDate), 1033, 1)

1033 stand for US English and end result was 09/22/2005 (mm/dd/yy)

I needed to change this to display Australian Date and Time format as dd/mm/yy. So I was looking for the LCID of Australian English and found out fallowing usefull article that display most LCID’s.

Changing the, Date, Time, and Currency Format

I end up changing the above code to fallowing to achive my requirement

select="ddwrt:FormatDate(string(@ows_EventDate), 3081, 1)

End result look like 22/09/2005

Canberra SharePoint User Group Meeting - 21st September

This is to remind you that the Canberra SharePoint User Group meeting is taking place on Wednesday, 21st September at Microsoft Canberra (Level 2, 44 Sydney Ave, Barton) starting at 5.30pm.

Gavin Wilson from HP will be joined by others from HP to present an overview of their usage and development of a SharePoint system. This will be a good opportunity to see how other businesses have utilized SharePoint to support their organization.

Jeff Alexander, IT Pro Evangelist from Microsoft will be introducing himself to the Canberra SharePoint Community as well!

We will also be giving away a copy of Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition, The Ultimate Photo, Music and Movie Enhancement Pack, so make sure you bring a business card to go into the draw!

Please note that due to security reasons at Microsoft Canberra, attendees arriving after 6pm will not be able to get into the building.

Beer and Pizzas will be provided, and we look forward to seeing you there!

Friday, September 16, 2005

SharePoint, Code Access Security and the SmartPart

Hi Guys

I was using the Smart Part for one of my SharePoint applications.

SmartPart is a SharePoint Web part that can host any ASP.NET user control. So you can create your web parts by using the VS.NET designer instead of coding everything by hand.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=6cfaabc8-db4d-41c3-8a88-3f974a7d0abe

I was having the problem of how to deploy the user control I created to SharePoint production environment with out lowering the security in the environment.

Fallowing is an article from Jan Tielens describing what need to be done to deploy a User Controls with Smart Part in a SharePoint environment supporting the Code Access Security.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/06/14/155165.aspx

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

WSS Full Text Indexing and SQL Server Failure and Resolution

I was having few issues around WSS site search in my production environment. It was not returning any search results. After looking at the issue, it was clear that the SQL Full-Text search component is unavailable to populate the catalog. Fallowing is a good detail article that I found that explain how to trouble shoot this issue.

WSS Full Text Indexing and SQL Server Failure and Resolution

KB Articles Links

PRB: Unable to Build Full-Text Catalog After You Modify MSSQLServer Logon Account Through Control Panel

How to manually reinstall the Microsoft Search service for an instance of SQL Server 2000

Thursday, September 08, 2005

The database schema is too old to perform this operation

I was trying to restore a portal from one environment to another and receive fallowing error message in the SPS log,

Portal creation failed Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: The database schema is too old to perform this operation in this SharePoint cluster. Please upgrade the database and try again. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x81070571): The database schema is too old to perform this operation in this SharePoint cluster. Please upgrade the database and try again.

The reason to above error message is the two environment are running different WSS versions. One environment was with out the service Pack 1 and other with the Service pack 1. Soon after I made sure that both environment are ruining the sane version of WSS, It was all working fine.

Using Reporting Services SharePoint Web Parts in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2

Summary: This article describes the new SharePoint Web Parts included with SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2. It includes information about installing the Web Parts, ways to use them, features they support, and troubleshooting procedures. The SQL Server 2000 Report Packs are used as examples.

Intended Audience: This document assumes that you have basic experience with Reporting Services and SharePoint, and that you are familiar with running programs from the command line. The Technical Details section is also targeted at software developers who are interested in more in-depth information, but you can safely skip that section without missing any of the main points

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