Ben There, Done That

The latest SDKs (version 1.4) have been release for both WSS and MOSS. You can download the SDKs and read more about them here.

I have a hardware upgrade! I’ve just been upgrade to a MacBook Pro. So far, so good, although I’m still playing around with the configuration to figure out how I best want everything to run. So far it’s the following configuration.

Hardware: 15.4″ MacBook Pro, 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo,4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 200 GB 7200 RPM SATA HD

Software:
Mac OS X with VMWware Fusion 2.0b2 running a Vista x64 VM. With the Unity mode in Fusion it allows me to run my Windows Apps in their own windows that I can re-arrange on my screen just like a normal Mac app. The performance isn’t quite as good as running Vista right on the Mac, but so far it isn’t to bad. I’m running Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Office 2007, and any other “Windows only” software. VMWare Fusion also allows me to run a single browser (i.e. if I click on a link in Outlook it opens it in the browser of my choice in Mac OS, currently FireFox 3.0). It also allows me to map the Document, Pictures and Music in Windows to the same folders in Mac OS. All my files are stored in Mac OS, but I can open them as if they were stored within my Vista VM. I’m using Mozy Home Backup to run an incremental nighty backup of all my important files. For ~$5.00/month I can get encrypted unlimited backup space. I’m also running Office 2008 for Mac. Running my VM takes quite a bit of battery power, so running Office for Mac allows me to save battery power while working on files and reading emails while traveling.

That covers all the major packages that I have running currently. I’m sure the list will continue to change and grow as I move forward. I have already been pleasantly surprised at the number of applications that I’ve been using in Windows that are also supported on the Mac.

Sorry this post is a little later after VSeWSS 1.2 came out, but it has taken me a little while to get to it.  Anyway, like so many others, the release of VSeWSS 1.2 for VS 2008 excited me, however, I was quickly disappointed when I found out I still couldn’t install it on a 64 bit OS or on a OS that didn’t have at least WSSv3 installed.  So I had to figure out how to fix this.  Fortunately I ran across an excellent blog post here.  After following the steps in this post, you will be able to install VSeWSS 1.2 on any OS regardless of if WSSv3 or MOSS is installed.

For those of you that want to develop for SharePoint on Vista or XP and wish to install VSeWSS (1.2 is the latest available here). I found a quick registry hack on Ahmed’s blog that you can apply.  All you need to do is add this registry value: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0] "SharePoint"="Installed" and then run the installer.  I did it on Vista with VS 2008 and it worked great!

One aspect of SharePoint that many people struggle with is site provisioning.  How do you give you users the ability to create sites so you, as the site administrator aren’t creating all the sites, but still control your sites so you don’t end up with thousands of unwanted or uncontrolled SharePoint sites?

Myself, along with a couple of co-workers at EPC Group have created a custom site provisioning workflow.  By creating a custom list and adding some custom .NET code as well as attaching a workflow we were able to make a very efficient site provisioning process.  Any user can access the site request form.  They fill out the information about the site they wish to create, including the site template, the department, country, region, desired permissions and the justification for their site as well as other information.  This request is added to the custom list and a workflow is trigger alerting the set administrator to the request.  The administrator can then accept or reject the request as well as change any information.  Once the request is approved, the site is automatically created using the site template selected and using a url that is built based on various selection and information entered in the site request form.

This allows you to have a lot more control over the creation of sites as well as have an ongoing list of all sites created.  From this general format you can add/remove automation based on how much you want done automatically vs. done manually and just to keep a running list of all sites and meta data about the sites.

When following Microsoft best practices for user permissions and using a different user for every application pool user identity, the access denied error when activating the publishing infrastructure in the site collection features, is an error that I have run across multiple times over the last couple of months.  It’s an annoying error without much information, but as it turns out, it is really easy to fix.  To enable the publishing infrastructure without changing any permissions simple do the following:

1. Log in to your SharePoint server as your SharePoint Administrator

2.  Open up a command prompt, if you haven’t add the SharePoint bin directory to your environment variables, browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin

3. Run the command stsadm –o activatefeature –name PublishingResources –url [your site url].

4.  Browse to your site in your site collection, Site Settings, Site Collection Features and activate your Publishing Infrastructure.  It should activate without any errors.

As many of you have seen, I posted a while back about Slide.Show that is available on CodePlex.  However, I hit a problem when I updated to Silverlight 2.0 using Firefox 3 and that Slide.Show would no longer work.  Thanks to ericphan.info I have a fix available for you (and it’s nice and simple).

To get Slide.Show working in Firefox 3.0 with Silverlight 2, go to the Silverlight.js site and download the latest version of Silverlight.js.  Replace the Silberlight.js file release with Slide.Show with this latest version and everything will go back to working normally.