Storytelling With Analytics

3 Important tips to note when creating calculated columns that display color coding, robots, hyperlinks, that are generated on SharePoint page rander. - When you place your JavaScript code in your content editor web part, always remember to move the webpart to the bottom of the page. Somehow its like SharePoint Pages load webparts bottom-up. - The HTML codings in columns don't work on personal views, only on public views. - The HTML codings in columns don't work when your view is has groupings and the view loads with groupings collapsed. Cheers.

This one time I was trying to programmatically modify an SPListCollection, and I stabled into the error " Collection was modified; Enumeration operation may not execute ". This error came about during the code block that looped through the SPListCollection and attempting to update the collection.

This one time I was trying to figure out why every time I created a SharePoint lookup field, be it programmatically or via the UI in SharePoint 2010 and 2007, which looks up to another SharePoint list field, it would always have a value "none" in it when in use. So now I really wanted to eliminate that value...

Hello folks. Once upon a time, I was trying to create SharePoint Task list Alerts programmatically for each user that had been granted permissions to the specific site. The requirement was that these users would be assigned tasks and they needed to receive notifications summarising all the tasks that they had been assigned, on a daily basis.

So this one time I was creating a SharePoint view programmatically, whose items I wanted to be ordered as "Most recent item must be top". This meant ordering by the "Created" column in descending order. So I used the following query:

When creating SharePoint site columns and adding them to content types programmatically, we normally commit out changes by calling the update function in the syntax:- ContentType.Update();  Did you know that on the site content type you are updating, this function does not tick ‘Yes’ on the “Update all content types inheriting from this type?” but leaves it tick as ‘No’ as seen below, did you know? I didn’t. So now for this option to be tick ‘Yes’, you would have to call the same function, but this time pass the boolean as follows:- ContentType.Update(true); Please take note that I would have already declared ‘ContentType’ as SPContentType of course. Happy coding!

Here are the essential documents you need to complete… Initiation Business Case: To justify the financial investment in your SharePoint Project, you need to write a Business Case. It lists the costs and benefits, so everyone knows what the return on investment will be. Feasibility Study: Before you kick-off your SharePoint Project, you need to determine whether your project is feasible, using a Feasibility Study. SharePoint Project Charter: You then need to document the objectives, scope, team, timeframes and deliverables in a SharePoint Project Charter. Planning SharePoint Project Plan: You need to create a Project Plan listing all of the tasks required to undertake your SharePoint Project from start to finish. Every task must be scheduled, so you know what needs to be done and when. Resource Plan: Next, you need to plan your resources by documenting the money, equipment and materials needed for your SharePoint Project. Quality Plan: You then need to set quality targets, so that the S...

Happy New Year All, I stumbled into an error "The search application for 'SharedServices' on server [SERVERNAME] is not provisioned. Confirm that the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service and Windows SharePoint Services Administration service are running on the server" when I tried to open search settings from my SSP site. After some little reasearch on the Internet, I came to find that most likely the config database cache was corrupt, and to resolve this, I had to clear the cache. So here is how I went about it: 1. Central Administration > Operations > Global Configuration > Timer job definitions > Application Server Administration Service Timer Job > Disable. 2. Then open windows administrative services (services.msc), stop Windows SharePoint Services Timer (aka OWSTIMER) 3. Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID and delete only the XML files from the directory, then open the cache.ini and change the number in it to 1. 4. Sta...

Let me save someone some time. So I was trying to run SharePoint Products and Technology Configuration Wizard for MOSS 2007, and during the course, I faced the error message, as seen from the screen dump above, "One or more types failed to load. Please refer to the upgrade log for more details". After alot of research, I came to learn that this was being caused by Office 2010 which was installed on the same machine as MOSS 2007. Therefore, the error went when I uninstalled Office 2010. Happy holidays ;)

The "SharePoint project scope" is all of the things that must be produced to complete a SharePoint project. These 'things' are called deliverables and you need to describe them in depth as early in the SharePoint project as possible, so everyone knows what needs to be produced. Take these 5 Steps to scope your SharePoint projects: Step 1: Set the Direction Start off by setting the direction for the SharePoint project. Do you have an agreed SharePoint project Vision, Objectives and Timeframes? Are they specified in depth and has your customer agreed to them? Does everyone in the SharePoint project team truly understand them and why they are important? Only by fixing the SharePoint project direction can you truly fix the SharePoint project scope. Step 2: Scope Workshops The best way to get buy-in to your SharePoint project scope is to get all of the relevant stakeholders to help you define it. So get your SharePoint project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders in a ...

While everyone else right now seems to be blogging about SharePoint 2010, I decided to blog a little bit about the previous product, SharePoint 2007. Recently, I had to develop a webpart that shows Tags from either a Site collection level or subsite level. I will give you the code but firstly, here is how it works: Assumining that you already have a library/list that has a choice field called Category(it can have any name), the webpart will search the site collection/subsite(depending on the scope you choose) for all columns that are named 'Category', and when found, will pull out the selected choices for display. Remember that this is a choice column, meaning that the choices will be repeatitive, and therefore, the more repeative the choices are, the bigger the font size of the Tag name will appear on the webpart. Secondly, the tags will get random colors on page load, while at the same time will be hyperlinked, and when you click on a tag, it will be passed to the Search and ...

As part of my Code|Influence projects, I embarked on developing and copyrighted an SMS powered application, that would receive text messages in form of SMS perform various types of functions based on the SMS content, and reply back to the sender the results via SMS. With the SharePoint passion in me, I then went further to see how this would work with SharePoint. With a proof-of-concept done, I finally can perform various SharePoint functions e.g create list items, kick off workflows, search etc...all via SMS. The good thing to note is that this SMS application's various operations that it can perform are so unlimited , including those outside the SharePoint world. For now, I will end here. Enjoy!

Not so much from the technical point of view, SharePoint Change Management is the process of monitoring and controlling changes within a SharePoint project. By managing the implementation of change, you can: • Reduce the impact of changes to the SharePoint project • Identify new issues and risks as a result of changes raised • Ensure that changes do not affect the SharePoint project's ability to achieve its desired objectives • Control the cost of change within the SharePoint project Change Management is comprised of the following processes: Step 1: Identify Change: The first step in the change process is to identify the need for change. Any team member can suggest a change to the SharePoint project, if he or she believes it is needed to keep the SharePoint project producing deliverables to the customer's specified requirements. After identifying a need for change, the team member records relevant information on a Change Request Form (commonly called a CRF), describing the chan...

Because I have always looked at SharePoint as a platform for building your organisations solutions that help improve business productivity, I thought I could write about a few simple project management steps that can aid when building these business solutions, classified as SharePoint Projects. Step 1: Set the Direction Before you start out, set the direction for the SharePoint project. Do this by clearly identifying the SharePoint project vision, goals and deliverables. State the overall timeframes for delivery and clarify the amount of resource available. Determine what is "in scope" and "out of scope". Identify the benefits and costs in delivering the SharePoint project and any milestones and constraints. Only once this is agreed with your SharePoint project Sponsor will you know what it is that you have to achieve. Step 2: Task Selection You're now ready to start planning. Identify the groups of tasks that need to be completed to build your SharePoint projec...

Hello fox, While going through a training video of the Collaboration module of the SharePoint Training Kit, I happened to to have clicked "Complete Training". After which, when I tried to view the video again, its assigned action read as "Continue", so when I clicked on "Continue", it brought up a message saying "Assignment Not Available. This assignment is not available because it has been submitted as complete. You can review this assignment after it is returned by your instructor.". So I tried to log in to the site as an instructor but i still couldn't review any assignments. I therefore went into the SQL Database, tried to study the tables in the DB, and i finally found that in the STKTrainingResult table, a record for every training module you take is entered in this table, and there was a column named "TrainingStatus" on my particular training record that needed to change from 0 to 1 the time I had clicked on "complete tr...

I recently had to do a workflow from SharePoint Designer 2010, that sends an email once a list item is created. After publishing it to its associated list in SharePoint 2010, I found that the workflow was not automatically starting when I create a list item, but when I manually start it, it would work. After some research, I found that I initially created it using the system account. So I then tried to use my own user account that was site collection admin on the site, to re-create the workflow, published it, and it now worked. Am still yet to understand why this is so.

To Start Year 2010, I thought I could come up with a list of a few simple things you can do with SharePoint Intranet to quickly start getting your ROI: 1. You can use your SharePoint lists to organize and track your organizations travel schedules. 2. You can create a web based company notice board. 3. You can set up departmental sites for your organization. 4. On your departmental sites, you can use the shared calendars to schedule meetings, display when key staff would be away from office, as well as show company recognized public holidays. 5. With company naming standards in place, you can upload your standard operating procedures (SOPs) to designations Document libraries. 6. Using lists, you can track your company’s invoices from the point of receipt to the point of paying it off. 7. You can set up a news site that has RSS feeds from other external news websites. 8. You can set up a helpdesk system that would allow your organizations users to log in calls online and be able to track...

When trying to upload file, then boom!!! you come across error: "Unable to complete this operation. Please contact your administrator", chances are that the partition drive on the machine where your Content database is sitting has run out of space. Therefore, you will have to look for alternatives of increasing the free space otherwise relocate your SharePoint databases.

Just thought I could save someone some time.... Imagine you are trying to create a SharePoint view, were you want to group by a specific column, but when you go to group-by drop down list, your column does not show up. Chances are that the column you are trying to group by is of type 'multiple lines of text'. Unless you can do some custom dev on this, a quick and simple solution will be to just change its type to 'single line of text', and your column will now appear in the group-by drop down.

Reporting to you live from Code|Influence... My colleague and I have been managing our organization's SharePoint infrastructure for some time now and we have just rolled out the first K2 BlackPoint in the country, intended mostly for SharePoint workflow developments.