Steve Sofian

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework Beta 2

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (admin) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:19:55 +0100

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is now available for MSDN subscribers to download. No worries if you are not a MSDN subscriber, the beta will be generally available on October 22 2009.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

And if you are looking specifically for SharePoint development, there are quite a number of resources available:

Walkthroughs

How To...

Installing SQL 2008 on Windows 2008 R2

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:41:00 +0100

Apparently, only SQL 2008 with SP1 is supported on Windows 2008 R2. You will be prompted to install SP1 of SQL 2008 before you run SQL 2008:

At first, I thought all I need to install the service pack once I have installed the SQL 2008. However, you will notice that only the SQL Reporting Services, Sync Framework and Books Online are installed, the rest of the SQL services installation will fail. The issue is that the setup support files that come with SQL 2008.

There is KB article, KB 955392, which provides steps on how update or slipstream the SQL 2008 installation with SP1. I personally prefer the slipstreaming method.

Steps:

Install the prerequisites of SQL 2008:
- MS.NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- Windows Installer 4.5
Extract the service pack to a folder on the server using the following command:
- SQLServer2008SP1-KB968369-x64-ENU.exe /x:C:\SP1
Run the service pack to install the Setup files
- C:\SP1\x64\setup\1033\sqlsupport.msi
Run the Setup.exe file from the SQL 2008 source media by specifying the /PCUSource parameter:
- Setup.exe /PCUSource=C:\SP1

Tips: Authentication Prompt for SharePoint sites

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:40:00 +0100

Recently, I have just setup my new company laptop to run Windows 2008 as a desktop and reinstalling SharePoint in Hyper-V. Upon completion of the installation and while accessing the Shared Services Provider, I was prompted continuously with authentication prompt, even I have entered the correct user and password. Subsequently, I am just presented with a blank page.

There is a KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861 that describes the same scenario.

This is more of a note to myself to remember to set the DisableLoopbackCheck in the registry:

Steps:

Open your registry editor by going to Start –> Run and enter regedit and click OK.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa in the registry editor.
Right-click Lsa, click on New and select DWORD value.
Enter DisableLoopbackCheck and press Enter.
Right-click DisableloopbackCheck and select Modify.
In the Value data box, enter 1 and click OK.
Restart your server.

I would recommend that you do this on at least the Central Administration server, if not all WFE servers.

Tip: Visual Studio Extensions for WSS on Windows 2008

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:43:00 +0100

When you install the Visual Studio Extensions for WSS, you are prompted to select a web site or create a new web site, and select an application pool to be used for the new site. This site will be used for deploying your SharePoint artifacts into SharePoint.

However, if you are doing this on a Windows 2008 server, which is running IIS 7, there is an additional features that will need to be activated. Otherwise, you will an encounter the following error:

The content type text/html; charset=utf-8 of the response message does not match the content type of the binding (text/xml; charset=utf-8). If using a custom encoder, be sure that the IsContentTypeSupported method is implemented properly. The first 1024 bytes of the response were: '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">…

Go to your Features in the Server Manager, click on “Add Features”

Expand the .NET 3.0 Framework Features and under the “WCF Activation”, select the “HTTP Activation” and click “Next” to install the feature.

So if you are trying to install the 10 SharePoint free themes, you will need to enable the WCF Activation in order to deploy them.

Cheers

Free SharePoint Administration Tool: Axceler PinPoint

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:21:00 +0100

PinPoint is a SharePoint Administration tool which you can download for free.

Example of features:

<Quote>

Locate most active sites
Identify documents and pages that have most activity
Find largest sites and largest items in SharePoint

</Quote>

You can download here

** Do note that I am not advocating or promoting the product, nor in anyway I am affiliated to Axceler.

XSLT Tip: Get Current Page URL

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:18:00 +0100

Quite often we will be writing custom XSL to customize the display of a Content Query Web Part (CQWP) and at times we would want to get the current page URL where the CQWP web part lives. For example, providing a link to a custom page to display your item as shown below, where the “Details” link is pointing to a custom page.

However, you would like to be able to get back to the origin page where the link is clicked. You could achieve this by doing the following in your custom XSL:

Step 1: Add the following namespace to your custom XSL:

xmlns:ddwrt=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebParts/v2/DataView/runtime

Step 2: Add a parameter name “PageUrl” right after XSL Stylesheet declaration:

<xsl:param name=”PageUrl” />

Step 3: Add a query string to the link:

Step 4: Add a link or button on your custom page and the following OnClick event:

MOSS SP2 Expiration Date Fix

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:52:00 +0100

As you probably have read regarding the SharePoint SP2 bug which reverts your license to the trial license which would expire after 180 days, and causes your existing license to expire in 180 days after the upgrade. You could have fixes the problem by re-entering your license key into the system.

Microsoft has released a fix for this, this could be applied before or after the SP2 upgrade.

The 32-bit version can be downloaded here.

The 64-bit version is here.

For more information, you can read the kb article here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

Optimizing SharePoint Sites Checklist

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:40:00 +0100

Chris O'Brien has compiled a detailed checklist on optimizing SharePoint sites, it is a great reference if you are tweaking performance on site.

Click here to read his article.

Something to note on SharePoint Service Pack 2

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (Admin) — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:18:00 +0100

If you have downloaded and installed the Service Pack, please take note that Service Pack 2 will reset your product license key and product expiration date as though you are running on a trial license, which will expire in 180 days. Though the expiration date will not affect the functionality of SharePoint until the expiration date.

For more information on this, check out the post by the SharePoint Team at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

Community Technology Update 2009 (23 May 2009)

ssofian.nospam@nospam.mvps.org (admin) — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:28:05 +0100

It is that time of the year again, where the different user groups come together and brings you a full day of technical sessions. This year, SharePointPROs.SG has prepared a full track of SharePoint contents. And this year, we are lucky to have Randy William, a SharePoint MVP, who is in town, to present.

Here are the details of the SharePoint sessions on that day:

10:00 – 11:15 A Close Look at the SharePoint Engine (Randy William (MVP), SyntergyOnline)

11:30 – 12:45 Basic Developer Knowledge Every Admin Must Know (Randy William (MVP), SyntergyOnline)

13-45 – 15:00 Supercharge Office Collaboration on MOSS (Tan Lip Joo, K2)

15:15 – 16:30 Inside MOSS 2007 Security & Permissions (Razi in Rais, MVP)

For more details, please visit http://ctu.geeksengaged.com

To register for the event, register here.