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8/6/2008

Community Kit for SharePoint – User Group Edition 1.0

You may have heard about the Community Kit for SharePoint (aka "CKS") – it's a set of templates, Web Parts, tools and source code that allows you to create community driven web sites and content on top of SharePoint Products and Technologies. One of the most popular components of the CKS is the CKS:EBE or Enhanced Blog Edition. You have seen many different SharePoint blogs using this template.

Another great add-on is the CKS User Group Edition. This is a SharePoint site template (.stp) that allows you to create a site already tuned to help with common tasks and themes related to technology User Groups. User Groups are a really positive force in the community and SharePoint is here to help. You can download the .stp file here: http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=1926.

Once you have downloaded the .stp file you need to upload it to your Site Templates Gallery. Follow the simple set of instructions below to get it running for yourself on a sub-site of your existing SharePoint site collection.

1. After downloading the SharePoint site template to your computer you need to add the .stp file to your Site Templates Gallery in the Site Settings area of your SharePoint Site under the Galleries heading. Navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings > Site templates.

2. Next you need to select the Upload Document link of your Site Template Gallery.

3. A new screen will appear which will allow you to browse and upload a template. Click the Browse button then locate the file you downloaded in step Next click Open and then OK. This will upload your file. Click through and save all the description and additional meta data about the file.

4. Now navigate to Site Actions > Create > Sites and Workspaces > type a title, description and path to your site and then click on the Custom tab for the template selection. Select your security options and then click Create. This will take several moments and then your new CKSUGE site will be displayed!

5. Success! Click the image below to see the template live and in action.

Posted at 4:01 PM by Blog Administrator | Category: SharePoint Add-in | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/25/2008

SharePoint Explorer View

Here's a few resources on trouble shooting the explorer and using it with Windows Server 2003 instead of the usual XP or Vista. A few of you out there asked for this.

Whitepaper on SharePoint Explorer view: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C523AC7A-5724-48BE-B973-641E805588F4&displaylang=en

Software Update for Web Folders: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=17C36612-632E-4C04-9382-987622ED1D64&displaylang=en

PS: the update may require a reboot.

Posted at 6:13 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/7/2008

Two trouble shooting tips for SharePoint pages that just won’t load

General Background: You have been working on your SharePoint site adding web parts through the browser interface and now suddenly your default.aspx page on your main site or sub site won't load. You've been customizing the site with SharePoint Designer and adding data views. You'll often get a non-descript SharePoint error page that suggests that you Trouble Shoot this issue by clicking through to a help file. Page Not Found. You're not alone.

Tool you need: SharePoint Designer 2007 with SP1

Tip 1: Closed or minimized web parts. Open your site with SharePoint Designer and the select the aspx page that will not load and take a look at in Design Mode. If you see any "grayed out" web parts these are in a minimized state. You may want to try to remove these entirely by deleting them.

Tip 2: Web parts that display too much data, corrupted data. Check to see if any web parts are not able to display the data that they are bound to.

Please backup any pages before making modifications. In most cases these two tips will get your page loading again.

Posted at 2:31 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/29/2008

The List cannot be displayed in Datasheet view (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007).

We've seen this one before – and there's a Microsoft KB article on it here but in the KB they don't mention any ways to resolve this issue.

Error Message: The list cannot be displayed in Datasheet View for one or more of the following reasons:

-A datasheet component compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed.

-Your web browser does not support ActiveX controls.

-Support for ActiveX controls is disabled.

Background: You will see this message displayed if you use FireFox, Opera, Safari or any browser other than Internet Explorer 6.0 – 7.0. Using Data Sheet View in WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 allows you to easily edit your SharePoint lists in a familiar spread-sheet-esque manner. This is not to say that it is a fully functioning web spreadsheet as in Excel Web Access (Excel Services). If you're having issues using the Data Sheet View there are several prerequisites you need to meet before you can use this SharePoint feature.

You must be using a PC
You must be using IE 6 or higher
You must enable certain ActiveX security settings.

Some anecdotal evidence also suggests is a good idea, though not necessary, to have the Windows SharePoint Service Support options for Microsoft Office installed. Skip to step 5 if you don't want to do this. Here are the instructions for Office 2007. To verify that these components are installed and available go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > click on Microsoft Office and then Change. You may need your Office 2007 install media beyond this step.

Follow the steps for changing your Microsoft Office installation.

Expand the Office Tools category.

Next verify that you have both the Microsoft Office Access Web Datasheet Component and the Windows SharePoint Services Support component installed.

If these components are not installed choose to run them from your computer and then click the Continue button and go through the installation process. You may need your Office 2007 install media.

Next you want to verify that you can run ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer. To do this open IE and go to the Tools menu > Internet options.

Next click on the Security tab and for your Trusted sites click (choose Internet if you do not add your SharePoint sites to your Trusted Sites) on the Custom level button (both examples shown below as 6 and 6A).

Verify that you can use previously unused ActiveX controls.

Verify that you can download signed ActiveX controls and that you can run ActiveX controls and plug-ins.

The next setting is very critical – select "Enable" for Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting.

Adjust these settings accordingly and then click OK twice to return to Internet Explorer.

You may need to close Internet Explorer and re-open the program before your new settings take hold and become active. This will resolve the issue in about 95% of the cases out there.

Posted at 1:13 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/23/2008

Bulk File Uploads to SharePoint shown as Checked Out in WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007

Issue: You are uploading multiple documents to your SharePoint libraries via the built in multiple document upload capability or through an explorer view. After uploading these files you notice that all these recently uploaded files are marked as checked out and you must manually click "Check in" on each document. This is time consuming and you want to avoid the issue with future uploads.

Background: This situation is related to a versioning setting in your document library.

Suggested Resolution: For the library in question where you are having this issue, do the following:

Navigate to the library then go to > Settings > Document Library Settings

Next click on Versioning Settings

Next Change your settings to require No Versioning, do not require documents to be checked out and then finally click OK to finish.

This will resolve the issue. If you want to re-enable versioning repeat the same steps above and change the final steps 4 and 5 to their original settings.

Posted at 4:24 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/26/2008

The Do’s and Don’ts of Site Collection Features and Site Features for SharePoint End Users

A frequent point of confusion and subsequent pain point for SharePoint end users is what those pesky Site features and Site collection features links actually do (highlighted below with green arrows). When we click on Site Features, we're taken to a new and fascinating page which lots of "Activate" or "Deactivate" buttons. Note of warning here: In about 99% of the cases an average end user will face, these Activate/Deactivate buttons are better thought of as the SharePoint site button of death. So don't click any of them ever unless you know you need too.

Below you can see that in our Site Collection features we have two entries – the components of the half of the "Fab 40" application templates and the built in three-state workflow. So at this point you'd be thinking to yourself that you'd probably need to activate the Fields and Content Types of the Windows SharePoint Services Application Templates by clicking the "Activate" button. No – you Do Not want to click that "Activate" button. Leave it be and move on.

If you've made it this far good job. Here's a circumstance when it is OK to click the "Activate" or "Deactivate" button. For example you may have the Community Kit for SharePoint: Enhanced Blog Edition (CKS:EBE) installed on your server. You may want to activate or deactivate the feature on your blog, and you can do so without negatively impacting your existing content – however it will significantly change your look/feel and features.

Here's an example of what not to do and a frequent way we have seen end users run into some confusion with their SharePoint site. Say for example you've created your site you're using with the Team Site template or similar. You navigate to Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Features and you find the Team Collaboration Lists feature and you click "Deactivate" -

First you will see a warning that, "You are about to deactivate the Team Collaboration Lists feature. If you deactivate this feature, any user data or customizations associated with this feature might be lost. In addition, any active features that depend on this feature might fail to function." In many cases you will lose some or all functionality by performing this action. We recommend not using the "Activate" or "Deactivate" buttons in the majority of circumstances.

If you proceeded beyond the warning screen above and returned to your site you would experience a loss of functionality. For example after doing this when you navigated to Site Actions > Create you would see a deprecated list of options. Essentially all the SharePoint features that relied on the particular features you Deactivated would no longer be available as options when you're creating additional SharePoint libraries/lists/etc.

If we return and Activate the features we disabled, we would see all our options return. We have seen cases where even though users were able to reactivate features, they did lose content/features/functionality that they had already built. Again, we recommend not using the "Activate" or "Deactivate" buttons in the majority of circumstances.

When you create additional sub site using one of the Microsoft application Templates aka the "Fab 40" you'll notice that the associated features are automatically Activated on in the site collection. There is no additional user interaction required to leverage those special features other than to create the site using the template.

Posted at 9:08 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

If only this was a SilverLight app….AnyChart for SharePoint beta

We had some time to review a beta charting tool for SharePoint this week. It is called AnyChart for SharePoint (www.anychart.com) and is currently in a functional beta format which you can download and deploy to your own SharePoint site collection as an end user (no administrator / IT interaction required). People ask us all the time for a charting feature for their SharePoint list data, and unless they're using MOSS or have a dedicated environment there are very limited options available. This product may be a good option for companies looking to add simple data visualization to their SharePoint site in a low-overhead and 99% browser compatible manner.

Installing the AnyChart for SharePoint beta was easy and only takes about 2 or 3 minutes from the time you download the file from their site to having it up and running in your SharePoint site collection. This is pretty much the fastest web part installation we've done.

To watch a short screencast on configuring a simple chart click below, or watch now "AnyChart for SharePoint beta"

Our only hesitation about this product is that it was not developed in SilverLight which would be a huge improvement over Flash. That said, it is a pretty good start for what is sure to be a successful product filling a need for end user accessible solutions in the SharePoint data visualization vertical

Posted at 5:02 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/6/2008

Enterprise SharePoint Infrastructure

SharePointHosting.com is now publically offering enterprise SharePoint infrastructure solutions for larger businesses with unique requirements related to availability and customization. These SharePoint infrastructure solutions help larger organizations leverage all of SharePoint power while maintaining the savings of outsourcing with a predictable monthly service fee.

Typical enterprise SharePoint infrastructure solutions include built in redundancy, load balancing, and an ultra high availability SQL Server configuration offered only by SharePointHosting.com. These solutions start at several terabytes (TB) and scale extremely efficiently in performance and storage.

Click the image above to learn more and contact us about these solutions.

Posted at 8:30 AM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/4/2008

SharePoint is a Green Technology That Saves You Money

One of the major ancillary benefits to using a SharePoint solution for your business or organization is the cost savings that that you'll see printing and shipping documents to your customers or clients. To many organizations this can be a major step forward not only in savings for printing costs, but also in terms of giving a helping hand to the environment. SharePoint truly is a technology that can help you go Green and go Digital. There are many solutions that allow you to directly connect your scanner to your SharePoint libraries (you need Microsoft SilverLight to watch) allowing you to go paperless without a lot of overhead or special software installed on your computer.

If you have any questions about going paperless with SharePoint in your organization please contact us – we have solutions that can scale from several gigabytes for small offices to many terabytes for large organizations.

Posted at 3:04 PM by Blog Administrator | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/12/2008

Office Documents Open as Read Only in Internet Explorer 7.0

This post contains information related to editing the registry on your computer – we highly recommend that you contact your local helpdesk prior to making any of these changes, and should always discuss this type of configuration with your IT team prior to doing anything.

Quoted from Microsoft.com below:

Important This article contains information about how to modify the registry. Make sure that you back up the registry before you modify it. Make sure that you know how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up, restore, and modify the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows XP and Windows Vista

SYMPTOMS

When you open a Microsoft Office 2003 or a 2007 Microsoft Office document in Microsoft Internet Explorer, the document opens with read-only permissions, and you cannot make changes to the document.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs in, but is not limited to, the following scenarios:

•	You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from another Office document.
•	You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from an e-mail message.
•	You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from a Microsoft SharePoint Services site or a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server site.

RESOLUTION

Note The steps in the Resolution section will have no effect when you open documents and hyperlinks from a Microsoft SharePoint Services site or a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server site.

To resolve this behavior so that you can open documents that are in the Internet or Local intranet security zones in Internet Explorer with read/write permissions, you must add the following registry key:

•	For Office XP HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1
•	For Office 2003 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1
•	For the 2007 Office system HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1

To do this, follow these steps.

Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

1.	Quit all Office 2003 and 2007 Office programs that are running.
2.	Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
3.	Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: *HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version_number>\Common\Internet* Note In this subkey, <version_number> corresponds to 10.0, 11.0 or 12.0 for the specific Office version that is installed. You must create the registry key in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree. The same setting under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE tree has no effect.
4.	Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5.	Type OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then press ENTER.
6.	Right-click OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then click Modify.
7.	In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8.	On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

REFERENCES

For more information about this behavior in Microsoft Office XP, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

867838 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/867838/) Office XP document in a SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft document library opens as read-only in Internet Explorer

APPLIES TO

•	Microsoft Office Word 2003
•	Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
•	Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
•	Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
•	Microsoft Office Excel 2003
•	Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
•	Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
•	Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2.0
•	Microsoft Office Publisher 2003
•	Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
•	Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003
•	Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003
•	Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003
•	Microsoft Office Access 2003
•	Microsoft Office Professional 2007
•	Microsoft Office Standard 2007
•	Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007