OT: Copy contacts between C905 and Satio

Switched telephone to a Satio yesterday :). But had some trouble to get my PIM information to come along. I´m running the Office 2010 beta so PC Suite from SEMC didn´t recognize it, the otherwise excellent MyPhoneExplorer could only move SMS and bookmarks between the phones. The solution was to use the Synchronization service from SEMC (still in beta). It worked perfect and now I also have the possibility to schedule an online backup directly from my phone.

Move My Site web application in MOSS 2007

We had a situation where a brand new web application needed a new host header and be moved from a high port to port 80.

Use this guide to add a host header.

Make sure you use the Default zone (or else you can not browse to 'Advanced Permissions' or add web parts).

Update "My Site" settings in the SSP

Recrawl the content source which index the user profile database, or else you will not be able to search for users.

Fix Hyper-V VHD for Virtual Box 3.0.10

I downloaded the Windows 2008 x64 VHD from Microsoft with the purpose to mount it in Virtual Box. When the virtual machine started the following error message was displayed: "Fatal no bootable medium found system halted".

The solution was to download VPC 2007 and run the Disk Wizard and compact the VHD (as stated here).

This Page has been modified since you opened it. You must open the page again

A lot of suggestions how to solve this:
- Add a "PublishingPageLayout" to the elements.xml file.
-Inherit from TemplateRedirectionPage instead of PublishingLayoutPage in the page layout file.
- MSO_PageHashCode is not cleared for detached pages.

None of the above had anything to do with my problem.

In my case it was two problems that throw the same error. I had one event receiver attached to a Pages library that did a call to "RunWithElevatedPrivileges" and did a SPListItem.Update() which caused the page to display the error message. I updated the event receiver according to this article, using the SPUserToken instead.

The other problem was that I had created a page with SharePoint Designer by right-clicking a Page Layout in masterpage and then choosing "New from Existing Page". This created the page but associated it with the wrong content type. Use SharePoint Manager 2007 and you will see that it attached the "Page" content type. Instead I used the web interface to create a new page and checked the content type which now was using "Welcome Page".

This leads me to the conclusion that the articles stating that you need to add a property "PublishingPageLayout" to your elements.xml files when provising (ex: create and upload files during feature activation) files are correct. But in my case I created a new page the wrong way (using SPD and not the web interface).

Failed to create feature receiver object from assembly

Remember that the class that inherits from SPFeatureReceiver need to be "Public"

User Profile Import stuck on "Enumerating"

I keep an eye on some of our clients SharePoint farms and today I came across an error in the profile import for one of the SSPs. “The user profile database connection cannot be made, because of error 0x80004005” is displayed on the “User Profiles and Properties” page and the “Profile import status” was only displaying “Enumerating”.

The import cannot be stopped, if the server is restarted then the error doesn´t disappear according to several posts in newsgroups.

So what to do? I checked and double-checked the SSP database and the values in the Profile_Stats, MIPObjects and MIPScheduleJob tables which all had values related to the Profile Import. But nothing that I did could solve the problem.

But then I remembered that the crawler application is based on the good old Indexing Service which means that the registry is also used to store settings. So after some digging I found the solution by changing a value in the registry for the crawler.

Open the registry editor. Browse to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Applications”. Here you will find a key for each SSP in the farm. Drill down to "\Gather\ProfileImport\ContentSources\0" (which is the Full Import) and check the key “CrawlNumberInProgress”. If it´s not “0xffffffff” then the number displayed corresponds to a key under the branch “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Applications\\Gather\ProfileImport\Crawls”.

I changed the number in the key “CrawlNumberInProgress” to “0xffffffff” and then restarted the “Office SharePoint Server Search” service for the settings to be applied.

The error message disappeared from “User Profiles and Properties” and I could start a new full import to the “User Profile Import”

Disclaimer: remember to backup your registry before making any changes. I am not responsible for your system damages because of any registry errors

Video from MS regarding the SharePoint opportunity

Sharepoint 2010 demo a few minutes in the video

Building Solutions on SharePoint

Lifecycle problem with WSPBuilder and EditorPart

I had a problem with the ApplyChanges method in an EditorPart class that was used in a WSPBuilder WebPart class (the default web part that WSPBuilder creates). The CreateChildControls in the WebPart class was triggered before the ApplyChanges method in the EditorPart class. Therefore the web part content was not updated and the page had to be reloaded to show any update to the web part.

In the WebPart class that is created from WSPBuilder the CreateChildControls is triggered from the OnInit method. This has the consequence that the ApplyChanges method in the EditorPart class will be triggered after the CreateChildControls in the WebPart class. My solution was to remove the method call in OnInit and then the ApplyChanges method was firing correctly.

The project location is not trusted and a zip file

When opening an unzipped Visual Studio project I got prompted with "The project location is not trusted". The problem was that the zip file was downloaded from an untrusted location and I needed to unblock it first. Right-click on the zip file --> Properties and the click on "Unblock"

SPListItemVersion and Dates

It seems SPListItemVersion objects are not displaying dates in the correct timezone. I had to convert the date to a DateTime object and the use the ToLocalTime method to get the correct date out.

Outlook 2007 and HTML email

Well, this can seem to be a little of topic :)

I was generating HTML e-mails that are sent via SharePoint (SendEmail method). But the e-mail wouldn´t render correctly in Outlook 2007. The e-mail was just cut off in Outlook 2007. I ran the HTML that was generated in validators and making sure that all tags was closed but nothing seemed to make me come closer to the solution.

Finnaly I stumbled across the solution! The problem was that I created a long string without linebreaks (\r\n)!

So my guess is that Outlook 2007 reads the HTML into a pre-definied string buffer and the parses it for output and in this case the HTML I sent was to long for this buffer.

Unable to break role inheritance

A customer had a problem to break the inheritance from the parent web. The error message on the first page was "500 Internal server error" and when breaking the inheritance from Site Settings was:

“Cannot complete this action.
Please try again. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.ResetSecurityScope(String bstrUrl, UInt32 dwObjectType, String bstrObjUrl, Guid guidDoc, Boolean bUnique, Boolean bCopyRoleAssignments, Guid& pguidScopeId, Int32& piError)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.ResetSecurityScope(String bstrUrl, UInt32 dwObjectType, String bstrObjUrl, Guid guidDoc, Boolean bUnique, Boolean bCopyRoleAssignments, Guid& pguidScopeId, Int32& piError) “

Inspired by this solution I just broke the inheritance of the permission levels and inherited it again to fix the issue of not being able to break the role inheritance.

Fast recap:
Browse to http:////_layouts/role.asxp
Break the inheritance
Enable the inheritance again

// Henrik

Another surprise in SharePoint

I have a list with versioning enabled and a "Multiple line of text" field that can not be updated via the UI. The field is also configured to append text to the current text.

When updating the field and using SPItem.SystemUpdate(false) (in code) the field don´t get a new entry (as it does when editing a field of this type via the UI). Nope, it simply overwrites the current text and updates the field.

One solution to this is to concatenate the old value with the new, with the drawback that the datestamp will always stay the same until a new version of the item is created.
I removed the append option and did the appending of the field myself instead.

// Henrik

"Copy to GAC" problem with WSPBuilder

See this thread for a solution to the problem. It seems that all application pools needs to be running for it to work.

// Henrik

"The given key was not present in the dictionary"

Error message when activating a feature with field definition included. Could not display any site columns via the site either. Fired up SPM and browsing the Fields collection and got an error message about a field type not correctly installed.

It turned out I had misspelled "Number" to lowercase "number" in my field definition file. Amend the line and upgraded the solution and the problem was resolved

WSPBuilder: Unicode characters

Got this error message from WSPBuilder when building a new WSP file:
"The filename of the CAB file must not contain Unicode characters!"

I had some some swedish characters in my projectfolder name. I removed it and updated the SLN file with the new path. Problem solved.

// Henrik

File attachment and Infopath 2003 SP1

We have been working on a small project using Infopath 2003 and MOSS to create a faster way to input information in a list. Among the challenges (which was quite a few despite it was software from MS on both "sides") faced was how to enable uploading a file while submitting information to a list.

Infopath 2003 provides a File Attachment Control which enables the end-user to select and attach a file to the form. Infopath automatically encodes the file in Base64 and adds a dynamic header in the front of the file. So we wanted to use the "AddAttachment" web service available to post the file, one of the parameters is a Base64 encoded string. Great! Well, the header added by Infopath is also included in the encoding. We only have Jscript or VBScript to use in Infopath 2003 if we don´t want to start to deploy extra code on the clients (which I try to prefer to stay away from) and the support for decoding/encoding files in those languages are not to great.



So our solution is to extract the filename from the header (code below) and the attach a list item event receiver for "ItemAttachmentAdded" which decode the file, removes the header and saves the file again serverside.



Here is the code for extracting the filename from an Infopath Base64 encoded attachment:



dim node

Set node = XDocument.DOM.documentElement.selectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:FileAttchmentControl")



If(node.text <> "") Then


'typecast the node to base64 as Infopath doesn't do this in node definition

node.DataType = "bin.base64"

'convert base64 node value to binary and store in nodeValue byte array

nodeValue = node.nodeTypedValue



dim convertByteArrayToHexString

convertByteArrayToHexString = ""

For intCounter = 1 to LenB(nodeValue)

convertByteArrayToHexString = convertByteArrayToHexString & Right("0" & Hex(AscB(MidB(nodeValue, intCounter, 1))), 2)

If(intCounter = 100) Then 'Assuming that the header is no longer that 100 bytes
exit for
end if

Next

dim filenameBuffer
dim filename
filename = ""
filenameBuffer = 0

'The length of the filenamebuffer is stored on pos 20-24 (byte), which means 41.47 in Hex and 1 as startpos for Arrays

filenameBuffer = getFilenameBuffer(convertByteArrayToHexString,41,47)



'Read the filename from position (49 to filenamebuffer * unicode - "\n") as end char

filename = getFileName(convertByteArrayToHexString,49,filenameBuffer*4 + 49 - 2)

Function getFilenameBuffer(data,startLoop,stopLoop)
dim k

dim filenameBuffer

for k = startLoop to stopLoop step 2

dim y1
dim y2
dim y3

y1 = Mid(data,k,2)
y2 = CLng("&h" & y1)
y3 = y3 + Int(y2)

filenameBuffer = y3

next

getFilenameBuffer = filenameBuffer

End Function

Function getFileName(data,startLoop, stopLoop)
dim k

dim filename

for k = startLoop to stopLoop step 4

dim h1
dim h2
dim h3

h1 = Mid(data,k,2)
h2 = CLng("&h" & h1)
h3 = Chr(h2)

if(h3 <> "") then
filename = filename & Cstr(h3)
end if

next

getFileName = filename
End Function

SharePoint Designer - now for free

Microsoft offers SharePoint Designer for free. See the SharePoint Team blog post for more information.

Additional user information import with BDC

Been working on an secondary connection to a SQL Server database that will be used to add more information to the user profile properties. Solution includes the BDC application but foremost setting the correct access permission for the account accessing the BDC application.

I use "RevertToSelf" in the ADF which makes the access to the BDC run with the account for the service "Office SharePoint Search Server".

So the account needs "Execute" permissions for the BDC application and all entities, DBDataReader to the SQL Server (or any other read permission) and finally "Manager User Profiles" under "Personalization Permissions". When troupbleshooting this the ULS is yor friend.

Make sure that no other accounts gets permission to the application in BDC, you want to avoid to expose the BDC application to the built-in web parts.

Moving to WSPBuilder

Attended the first Sweden SharePoint User Group Malmö meeting (phew, that was long) yesterday. Karsten was there and talked about his tools WSPBuilder and SPM2007.

We have been using STSDev for sometime now, but it feels like the development have stalled and other participants also noted that you need to fix bugs in the tool to make it work in different situations. So we have decided to switch to WSPBuilder instead for coming projects. Hopefully it cuts down the time developers needs to write code in the OM.