SharePoint Blog - René Hézser

Major Update to the Fileserveraccess Web Part

René Hézser — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:33:23 GMT

In 2008 I’ve released a Web Part, which enables your users to access files on your fileservers through SharePoint. Original post. This Web Part has been downloaded many times. With this new version, I’ve tried to deal with the most asked questions (like Kerberos), which will make the Web Part easier to use. Naturally new features have been implemented, to get you to upgrade to the new version.

With this release, the Web Part requires SharePoint Foundation / Server 2010. For the users who are still using WSS V3, please stick to the old version, or upgrade your farm

First some screenshots, so you know what I am talking about.

Features

Download files from your fileservers via SharePoint
Download a folder with all containing files as zip-file
Upload files to a fileserver
Delete files from a fileserver
View the file properties
By default, the fileserver path has to be UNC. Local paths are not allowed, so a user cannot enter C:\ to access e.g. the web.config or other files on the local server
Multilanguage

Of coarse the access to the files is security trimmed. Meaning that if your users would not be able to access files with their logon from their client, they won’t be able from the Web Part!

Requirements

For authorization against the fileserver, the credentials of the currently logged on user is used. For SharePoint (and any other application as well), it is necessary to configure the WebApplication which is hosting the Web Part to use Kerberos instead of NTLM. Otherwise a server cannot pass the user credentials forward to a second server. This is called the “Double-Hop problem”. To get a glimpse about the topic, take a look at an article I wrote some time ago. Configuring Kerberos for SharePoint. That post has been written for SharePoint V3! But there are plenty of Kerberos Guides out there for SP 2010. And a whitepaper from Microsoft: Configuring Kerberos Authentication for SharePoint 2010 Products http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff829837.aspx

If you do not configure Kerberos for the WebApplication, the Web Part will detect that, and show a notification in the properties section.

A small sidenote: If you are going to use local paths (meaning a folder on your SharePoint server), you can continue using NTLM.

Another good starting point for Kerberos-Troubleshooting can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/friis/archive/2009/12/31/things-to-check-when-kerberos-authentication-fails-using-iis-ie.aspx

Configuration

To use the WebPart, you’ll need to at least configure a path. Files – and subfolders – from that path will be shown.

Additionally, there are some properties, which modify features of the Web Part.

The Paging size defines, how many files are displayed on one page. With the next three checkboxes, you can allow files to be downloaded as zip, allow files to be uploaded and to be deleted.

I recommend to leave the caching activated. Deactivate only, if you have specific reasons, because there will be more todo for your SharePoint server and fileserver.

Using a local path as source

In case you want to use a local path as source for the Web Part, you have to allow the path to be used. To do so, follow the steps below.

locate the feature.xml file ("C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\FileserverAccess\Feature.xml")
Edit the file in your favorite editor
Look for the property with the key “AllowLocalPaths” and modify the value to correspond to the driveletter you wish to use

Replace “Driveletter” with e.g. “C”. You can specify more than one drive letters. In that case use a “;” as divider
Save the feature.xml
Restart your IIS (iisreset)

Remember that you’ll need to modify the file on all of your FrontEnd SharePoint Servers! After an upgrade of the Web Part, the file has to be modified again. If you do not allow local drives, the Web Part will show an error.

This version is compatible to the old version. So you can simply upgrade the solution and benefit of the new features!

Download the new version for SharePoint 2010 (Foundation and Server): RH.FileserverAccess.wsp

Download the old version for WSS V3 / MOSS 2007: RH.FileserverAccess.wsp

Das neue Jahre bringt neue Aufgaben

René Hézser — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 22:07:41 GMT

Nach fast 8 Jahren bei der Firma Net at Work, startet für mich ein neues Kapitel. Auch auf diesem Wege möchte ich mich noch einmal bei allen Kollegen und Kunden für die Zusammenarbeit bedanken.

Ab heute hat es mich beruflich nach Berlin verschlagen. Dort habe ich bei der ITaCS angedockt. Ich freue mich auf neue Projekte und Herausforderungen.

Ach ja. Ich wünsche allen Lesern ein Frohes Neues Jahr!

Update to the “My Alerts” Webpart

René Hézser — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:17:20 GMT

I’ve made a small update to the My Alerts Webpart.

The update improves SharePoint 2010 support.

Update: WarmupScript

René Hézser — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:43:19 GMT

A long time ago, I posted a program which will hit all your sites. With parameters you can specify to hit all sites within a sitecollection.

This program has been updated. You can not omit a start Url, and specify “Farm” as parameter. This way, all sites in all sitecollections in all webapplications in all… will be warmed up.

The warmup will use a HttpRequest to query all homepages. It will not hit every page in the pages libraries, but hitting each web is sufficient for most scenarios.

One thing to mention. If you want to warmup your Central Administration, you’ll have to call the program with the Url, as the CA will not be included in the webapplication enumeration of a SharePoint farm.

Usage:

WarmupSharePoint http://your.server.url [AllSites] – will hit one site only, unless the AllSites parameter is specified. Then all sites will be dealed with.

WarmupSharePoint Farm – iterates through all sitecollections and hit all sites within

Download the program
Download the sourcecode

What to know about the feature folder

René Hézser — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:06:35 GMT

One of the first things I used to tell guys new to SharePoint development is: Never ever name the folder of your feature “Feature1”. If you create a solution with WSPBuilder, or did some time ago with VS 2008, you have to rename the folders immediately!

This is how a typical SharePoint project looks like, if you create features. I guess most of us have used the mighty WSPBuilder (http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com) for developing with SharePoint.

After building the VS solution and creating a WSP package with WSPBuilder, the wsp contains two folders. They reflect the names, we defined in VS.

Now lets take a look at the same features in a Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Solution.

It almost looks the same as a WSPBuilder solution in VS 2008.

The features have been created by right-clicking on the Features folder in the Solution Explorer. This is important.

In many places VS uses tokens to replace strings with certain solution specific values like the assembly name. You can take a look at the tokens here: Replaceable Parameters

If we look at the wsp again, we notice the difference. Visual Studio 2010 has added the solution name as prefix to the feature folders. Great. Thank you Microsoft. Now we can name our feature folders e.g. after the scope. (Site, Web, Webapplication of Farm), and do not have to worry about duplicate names.

The magic of this can be seen, if we take a look at the properties of the feature folders.

Conclusion: VS 2010 is a great improvement to us SharePoint developers. We don’t have to know all the places where it helps, but it can’t hurt, either. I hope this article brings a little light to the magic

Use Powershell ISE for SharePoint 2010

René Hézser — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:45:22 GMT

To be able to use the ISE for SharePoint, you can configure it to load the SharePoint cmdlets automatically.

Scot Hillier wrote a great article about it. Read “Setting up PowerShell ISE for SharePoint 2010”.

If you only want to use the SharePoint cmdlets once, you can register them with this two lines:

If ((Get-PSSnapIn -Name Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{ Add-PSSnapIn -Name Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell }

SharePoint 2010 and HTML5

René Hézser — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:58:49 GMT

“v5.master” is a simple HTML5 master page designed for SharePoint 2010. It makes good use of the amazing new features of both HTML5 and CSS3, including CSS3 media queries. The master page is extremely simplistic in nature, and is truly meant to serve as a framework for building your own SharePoint 2010 customizations.

Here comes some good news for SharePoint and HTML 5. If you want to build your masterpage for HTML 5, you can: http://kyleschaeffer.com/sharepoint/v5-responsive-html5-master-page/

Thank you, Kyle!

SharePoint 2010 October 2011 CUs have been released

René Hézser — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:21:48 GMT

Description of the SharePoint Foundation 2010 cumulative update package (SharePoint Foundation server-package): October 13, 2011

Description of the SharePoint Server 2010 cumulative update package (SharePoint server-package): October 13, 2011

SPUrlUtility.CombinePath

René Hézser — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:53:55 GMT

Here is another “watch out” for using the SharePoint object model.

SPUrlUtility.CombineUrl(web.Url, string.Empty)

The line above will throw an exception, as CombinUrl doesn’t like empty strings.

Updates for SharePoint 2010 Products, changed update strategy!

René Hézser — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:26:40 GMT

The latest updates can be found on this technet website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847

I was looking for the August 2011 updates. They are not released yet. But I found an interesting text on the page:

The packaging of cumulative updates changed as of August 31, 2011. The following packages are provided for cumulative updates:

SharePoint Foundation 2010

SharePoint Foundation 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010

SharePoint Foundation 2010 + SharePoint Server 2010 + Project Server 2010

As a result of the new packaging, it is no longer necessary to install the SharePoint Foundation cumulative update and then install the SharePoint Server cumulative update.

That’s great news! Thank you Microsoft!