Attis on SharePoint and More...

I'm Moving On

J. Dan Attis — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:45:28 GMT

Let me start this post by saying that I am very excited. I have a new job! After working the past 20 months for quite possibly the best consulting company in the country as far as I am concerned, I have decided to make a move. Not only was Slalom Consulting a great place to work, but the people there were fantastic. It is them I will miss the most. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and wish the organization the best.

So where am I going? I am joining the team at B&R Business Solutions! I will be working with some very smart people as well as some fellow SharePoint MVP's. Some of those people include, but are not necessarily limited to Jason Medero, Chris Regan, Bob Fox, Josh Carlisle, and Michael Lotter.

I will be working from home. This means a lot to me since I was averaging about 2 hours a day in the car commuting. I also tended to eat out every day. Now I will be able to enjoy more time at home with my family.

Technically, I don't start until January 5th. I am heading home to Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada next Saturday to spend the holidays with our families. Jody and Lily flew out last Friday and I miss them already.

MSDN Developer Conference

J. Dan Attis — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:13:35 GMT

If you haven't heard already, Microsoft has put together what you could call a mini conference. If you missed PDC, this will be a pretty good wrap up of what happened. For only 99 bucks, you can get the best of PDC in your own backyard (Atlanta) and hear all the news around Windows 7 and the Azure Services Platform as well as all the other great announcements that have been made over the last couple of months. Here is an excerpt from the conference site:

The MDC will give you a glimpse into the future of the Microsoft Application Platform. You will experience Microsoft’s vision for Cloud Computing, our Internet services platform that will enable you to extend existing solutions, creating applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone. Be among the first to see the full range of advances in Windows 7, the next major version of the Windows client operating system. Sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight, Live Mesh, and more.

Here is the link to the conference registration site. Hurry up as space is filling up fast! Hope to see you there!

http://www.msdndevcon.com/pages/start.aspx

SPDisposeCheck finally available

J. Dan Attis — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:31:00 GMT

Microsoft has finally announced the not so general availability the SPDisposeCheck tool. This tool, available internally for quite some time will help customers and their developers identify potential issues in their SharePoint code, namely due to the disposing of objects. A thorough understanding of the the SharePoint object model is really required before interpreting the results provided by the tool as the potential for false positives does exist and as such can and should only be done under Microsoft's guidance. Check out this post on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog for a more detailed explanation as well as some great links to other resources that will help you help yourself produce more stable SharePoint code.

Atlanta Microsoft Professionals User Group Meeting - Monday, November 3rd

J. Dan Attis — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:25:39 GMT

Come join us on Monday, November 3rd at our usual location, the Microsoft Regional Headquarters at the Sanctuary Park Complex in Alpharetta for an evening of questions and answers. Hopefully you've spent the week watching, or better yet if you are lucky, participating in the PDC breakout sessions. At this months meeting we are going to give the fish bowl format a whirl and discuss some of the things we have learned at PDC (or while watching the break out sessions). What is the fish bowl format you may ask?

In a fish bowl, there will be several chairs set up in the front of the room with one chair left intentionally empty. This empty chair is for you to join the conversation. If something is said that you wish to comment on, come on up and take a seat. One of the other people sitting will then self select themselves to leave the panel. The session will continue on until there is nothing left to be said.

This should be a lot of fun, and educational. I for one, love hearing other peoples views on technology.

As always, the abstract, directions and speakers are located on the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals web site located at http://www.atlantamspros.com.

I hope to see you all there, and don't forget about the detour during bridge construction on Old Roswell Road!

How to change the default page of a SharePoint site using a Feature

J. Dan Attis — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:56:00 GMT

I am currently working on a project where we plan on having thousands of teamsites. In order to help the search process we had to make a few modifications to the default page, namely adding some meta tags that once crawled, we could surface as managed properties and use to enhance the search experience. As we all know, modifying the out of the box files is a no-no so we were left with 2 options to consider.

The first option we considered was to create a custom site definition with our custom default.aspx page. The second option was to create our custom default.aspx page and swap it out with the original one via a Feature. After giving this much thought, we decided to go with the second, Feature based option.

If you want to read a good discussion on how/when/why to use a custom site definition, head on over to Joel Oleson's recent post on the subject and the conversations that followed; good stuff!

To start the process, I created a Feature called Custom Default Page. This Feature contains the following 5 files, all of which are discussed in more detail below.

feature.xml
customDefault.xml
customDefault.aspx
customDefault.aspx.cs
CustomDefaultPageFeatureReceiver.cs

feature.xml

As we know all Features require at least one file and that file is feature.xml. This file contains the definition for the Feature, including it's name, description, id, and other meta data. It also contains references to supporting element files if they exist as well as a class and assembly if the Feature uses a receiver, which our does. Our Feature is defined as follows:

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

   2:  <Feature

   3:    Id="featureGuid"

   4:    Title="Custom Default Page"

   5:    Description="This Feature contains a custom default page."

   6:    Version="1.0.0.0"

   7:    Scope="Web"

   8:    Hidden="TRUE"

   9:    DefaultResourceFile="core"

  10:    SolutionId="solutionGuid"

  11:    ReceiverAssembly="CustomDefaultPage, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=yourToken"

  12:    ReceiverClass="CustomDefaultPage.CustomDefaultPageFeatureReceiver"

  13:    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

  14:    <ElementManifests>

  15:      <ElementManifest Location="customDefault.xml" />

  16:      <ElementFile Location="customDefault.aspx" />

  17:    </ElementManifests>

  18:  </Feature>

All Features must have a unique identifier, specified by the Id attribute. We then add a Title, Description, and Version. This Feature is scoped to Web as any site at any level can use it. I made my Feature hidden since I don't want it available on all sites. In fact, the original purpose of this Feature in my specific case was that it be used on the top level site of a teamsite site collection only, such that we can index the home page of the site collection independently of its content and have it appear and be ranked in search results based on the custom meta information we added to it. That may sound long winded but I plan on blogging that particular problem and solution at a later date.

We can see that the Feature is backed by an assembly and class that define its receivers. Also, we see that the customDefault.aspx we are going to use is defined by an ElementFile element and the module that will provision that file is defined by the an ElementManifest element in the customDefault.xml file.

customDefault.xml

This file contains a module element that will provision our customDefault.aspx page to the root folder of the SharePoint site in which the Feature is activated. It is defined as follows:

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

   2:  <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

   3:    <Module Name="CustomDefault" Url="" RootWebOnly="TRUE">

   4:      <File Path="customDefault.aspx" Url="customDefault.aspx" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="TRUE" />

   5:    </Module>

   6:  </Elements>

This is quite bare bones and simple. The module specifies the local Path (in the feature folder), the Url on the SharePoint site (no folder = root folder) and to always replace it when the Feature is activated.

customDefault.aspx

I am not going to get into the details of what I placed into this file other than the fact that I grabbed a copy of the default.aspx file located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\SiteTemplates\sts\default.aspx and renamed it in my project. I also created a backing class for it and consequently needed to changed the directive at the top of the file from this:

<%@ Page language="C#" MasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPartPage,Microsoft.SharePoint,Version=12.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

to something like this:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master" Inherits="CustomDefaultPage.CustomDefaultPage, CustomDefaultPage, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=yourToken" %>

Then, in my CustomDefaultPage.aspx.cs class, I can add code to do whatever I want on my custom default page, such as insert custom meta data as was the case for me. This allows me to have complete control over the custom default page exactly like I would in a regular asp.net web application.

customDefault.aspx.cs

I won't go into the details of this file either, but it looks similar to this, with my logic inserted.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

   3:  using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

4:

   5:  using Microsoft.SharePoint;

   6:  using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

7:

   8:  namespace CustomDefaultPage

   9:  {

  10:      public class CustomDefaultPage : WebPartPage

  11:      {

  12:          /// <summary>

  13:          /// Raises the <see cref="E:System.Web.UI.Control.Load"></see> event.

  14:          /// </summary>

  15:          /// <param name="e">The <see cref="T:System.EventArgs"></see> object that contains the event data.</param>

  16:          protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)

  17:          {

  18:              // code removed for brevity

  19:          }

20:

  21:      }

  22:  }

CustomDefaultPageFeatureReceiver.cs

All of the magic happens when the Feature is activated AND when the Feature is deactivated. You may be wondering why the deactivation code is required. Consider a hosted environment where the need to remove customization WITHOUT breaking SharePoint. Depending on how your activation and deactivation code is written, it is possible to render the home page of your site inaccessible (I know since in the process of building this it happened to me). This is very undesirable, so it is always a good idea to anticipate what may need to happen when you deactivate a Feature. Some Features may not require any special logic when they are deactivated, but some most certainly do and I believe that this is a case when you should handle that.

The code for the Feature Receiver will look something like this:

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.IO;

   3:  using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

   4:  using System.Xml;

5:

   6:  using Microsoft.SharePoint;

   7:  using Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities;

   8:  using Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

9:

  10:  namespace CustomDefaultPage

  11:  {

  12:      public class CustomDefaultPageFeatureReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver

  13:      {

  14:          /// <summary>

  15:          /// Occurs after a Feature is activated.

  16:          /// </summary>

  17:          /// <param name="properties">An <see cref="T:Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiverProperties"></see> object that represents the properties of the event.</param>

  18:          public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

  19:          {

  20:              if (properties != null)

  21:              {

  22:                  // get a reference to the web

  23:                  SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;

24:

  25:                  // back up the original home page

  26:                  SPFile defaultPage = web.Files["default.aspx"];

  27:                  defaultPage.MoveTo("default-old.aspx");

28:

  29:                  // add components to the new custom default page here, if necessary

30:

  31:                  // move the new default page to default.aspx

  32:                  SPFile newDefaultPage = web.Files["CustomDefault.aspx"];

  33:                  newDefaultPage.MoveTo("default.aspx");

34:

  35:                  // update navigation, if necessary, here

  36:              }

  37:          }

38:

  39:          /// <summary>

  40:          /// Occurs when a Feature is deactivated.

  41:          /// </summary>

  42:          /// <param name="properties">An <see cref="T:Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiverProperties"></see> object that represents the properties of the event.</param>

  43:          public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

  44:          {

  45:              if (properties != null)

  46:              {

  47:                  // get a reference to the web

  48:                  SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;

49:

  50:                  // delete the default page

  51:                  SPFile defaultPage = web.Files["default.aspx"];

  52:                  defaultPage.DeleteAllPersonalizationsAllUsers();

  53:                  defaultPage.Delete();

54:

  55:                  // restore the back up

  56:                  SPFile originalDefaultPage = web.Files["default-old.aspx"];

  57:                  originalDefaultPage.MoveTo("default.aspx");

  58:              }

  59:          }

60:

  61:          /// <summary>

  62:          /// Occurs after a Feature is installed.

  63:          /// </summary>

  64:          /// <param name="properties">An <see cref="T:Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiverProperties"></see> object that represents the properties of the event.</param>

  65:          public override void FeatureInstalled(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

  66:          {

  67:              //throw new Exception("The method or operation is not implemented.");

  68:          }

69:

  70:          /// <summary>

  71:          /// Occurs when a Feature is uninstalled.

  72:          /// </summary>

  73:          /// <param name="properties">An <see cref="T:Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiverProperties"></see> object that represents the properties of the event.</param>

  74:          public override void FeatureUninstalling(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

  75:          {

  76:              //throw new Exception("The method or operation is not implemented.");

  77:          }

78:

  79:      }

  80:  }

I played around a lot with the MoveTo() and CopyTo() methods and this is the combination that worked 100% of the time. I have found CopyTo() to be a little unpredictable but your mileage may vary. The key takeaway here is to always anticipate your Features deactivation needs, especially in a hosted environment. All hosting companies have an Service Level Agreement (SLA) to adhere to and if they determine that your customization is causing a problem, I would venture to bet that there is language in that agreement that allows them to deactivate you customizations to honor that agreement and if that were to happen, I would want my users experience to not be interrupted, at least not to the degree that an unavailable home page might produce, wouldn't you?

NYC SharePoint User Group

J. Dan Attis — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:14:56 GMT

I thought I would let the world know, particular those of you in the NYC metropolitan area that on Wednesday, November 5th, I will be participating in the New York City SharePoint User Group meeting. I will be participating on a development panel of sorts answering questions on you guessed it, SharePoint development, my all time favorite topic. Some other awesome SharePoint folks will be attending as well. Allan Schweighardt from Microsoft, Piotr Prussak from Revlon, Jason Medero and Bob Fox from B&R Business Solutions, and Paul Galvin from EMC Corporation.

Here is a short abstract taken from the site (NYC SharePoint User Group):

The discussions will be divided up into two areas IT Pro and Development. Both areas will be comprised of a great group of expert panelists answering all type of questions ranging from architecture, workflow, infrastructure, custom development and many other great topics. The members on the panel will consist of seasoned experts along with multiple SharePoint MVP’s! So bring your best questions and discussion topics to next month’s meeting and lets jump into the trenches of SharePoint Products and Technologies!

It should be a great event and I hope to see you there!

Back with a Vengeance!

J. Dan Attis — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:37:21 GMT

Where has Dan been?

That is a great question and one that has a pretty simple answer. I have been SWAMPED at work. I have been working on my largest SharePoint implementation to date. Essentially I have been architecting and building a corporate communications intranet portal for a very large enterprise customer over the last few months, roughly 75K users. We are in the tail end of the project now and time, although still very precious, is a little less scarce. I hope to ramp up my blogging prowess over the next few weeks and pump the cloud full of more information about SharePoint and my personal experiences with it over the last few months. I have had many challenges and discovered a ton of interesting and useful nuggets along the way.

Not only is this an awesomely cool SharePoint implementation using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, but it is also built using the Web Content Management (WCM) features along with a whole lot of customizations (my favorite). A lot of "social", interactive customizations were made to the site that allowed users to do things like rate and comment on articles and the like, features not available out of the box. Did I mention that the portal is also fully branded?

This project is also one of the first projects hosted on the Microsoft SharePoint Online platform. Working directly with the team at Microsoft has been challenging, educational and fun to say the least. I truly believe it will be the platform of choice for enterprise customers wanting to offload the hosting and support burden that often comes with large scale SharePoint implementations. Check out this article for more information!

Please update your feeds to point here as I am moving from my previous home.