Month: October 2010

Posted on

Missing Features from SharePoint Designer 2010

SharePoint Designer 2010 is missing a pretty important feature.  The ability to rollup data from child sites and rolldown information from Parent sites.

Here's what we use to be able to do in SPD2007:

1) You could open the Data Source library by clicking "Data View->Manage Data Sources" and then you could then add a new data source library by clicking the button at the bottom:

2) This link would allow you to type a url to another site:

3) This would then allow you to see the other data source library's data sources

4)  You could then use the "Linked data source" wizard to select from the current and newly added data source library

 

The ability to do this is missing in SPD2010, you will see no link that allows you to add these external libraries:

In software design, it is a sin to remove features that your users have grown accustom too.  The only work around that
I have found it to try to utilize the REST or SOAP data source to connect to the other libraries:

This of course means that you will need to setup the authentication:

Only problem, every time I have tried to do this, Designer 2010 gives an error, which basically leaves us without this
valuable feature we had in 2007.

Marc has posted a workaround to create the manual code that uses data sources in seperate sites

Posted on

SharePoint Health Analyzer Jobs

SharePoint has the ability to heal itself.  Pretty cool concept invented by the guys at IBM a long time ago and finally being
worked into Microsoft products.  In central administration you will find the 'monitoring' page has some pretty neat things on it:

One of the coolest is the Health Analyzer Rules. By clicking on Review Rule Definitions, we will see several of these:

I have explored several of these jobs and being it is RTM, not all of them are working exactly like they were intended to.  One
example is the 'One or more categories are configured with Verbose trace logging.' rule.  This rule is designed to check
if anyone has set the logging setting to 'verbose'.  If they have, it can automatically fix this condition.

Out of the box, we can see the settings are 'Information' for Event Level and 'Medium' for trace level:

As an unexperieced SharePoint admin, you may end up clicking the "All categories" checkbox and then setting the values to
their highest level 'Verbose":

 

This is bad as it will generate VERY large log files in a production environment.  We are talking
gigabyptes/minute.  This is very bad for a virtualized image as the image file will grow very large.  Then try backing it
up by copying it…not fun copying a several 100's gigabyte VM file around.

Luckily, the health rule will watch for this condition and when it finds it will give us the nice red or yellow bar at the top of the Central
Administration site.  We will also see that the condition has been noted in a rule status list.  Clicking on the item, we will
get a definition of what is misconfigured, note the ability to "Repair Automatically":

Unfortunately, the logging health analyzer job needs an update.  It is suppose to reset the levels back to the default settings.  It does this for the
Trace level setting, but it doesn't touch the event level settings:

These still remain at 'Verbose' after the job runs.  The job should also set these
back to 'Information' as per the out of the box settings.

Posted on

Dead Beat Training Centers – The Disgraceful List

Ok, so I have a potential dead beat training center that I'm going to embarass pretty heavily if they don't pay up.  I will be posting their name here on our "Dead beat Training Centers" list.  If you are an MCT or a training broker and have some outstanding payments, this will be a potential outlet to let the community know about them.  Email me your deadbeat center and what they have or have not done and I will post it here (please note that this will NOT be anonymous).

 MCTs' beware the following training centers:

Chris

Posted on

SharePoint Saturday San Diego – Call for speakers

Want to come to sunny, amazing, awesome San Diego in Feburary (2/26/2010) and meet fellow SharePoint enthusiats?  Join us as a speaker for San Diego's first SharePoint Saturday:

SPS Site:
http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/sd/default.aspx

Register Here:
http://spssan.eventbrite.com

Call for speakers:
Send an email to chris@sanspug.org with:

o             Name:

o             Title:

o             Company:

o             Email address (for Connections business):

o             Email address (for attendees, if different):

o             Mobile phone:

o             Web/Blog URLs (if applicable):

o             Twitter handle  (if applicable):

o             Bio: <A current bio is required>

o             Headshot: Attach a printable headshot (no 72dpi web-sized jpgs).

 

For each submitted topic, use the following template:

 

o             Title: <a sexy, marketable title that also clearly indicates the topic of the session>

o             Content Focus: <IT PRO, Dev, Bus User, Governance, 3rd party tools, etc>

o             Abstract: <abstract>

We will also require that you submit your PPTs before you are confirmed to be a speaker ( you will have till January 15th to submit the PPTs).

This event is hosted by San Diego SharePoint Users Group (www.sanspug.org)

Chris

Posted on

Microsoft is looking for a few good projects!

Through a local friend who's company that is the leading Connected Systems content provider for Microsoft, we are partnering with them and Microsoft to engage on projects to develop solutions built using Windows Server AppFabric, Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. We will be co-sponsoring software development projects that meet business and technical criteria elaborated below.  If you are interested, feel free to email me (chris@architectingconnectedsystems.com) or DM me on Twitter (@givenscj).

Qualifying “Business Criteria”

·        Signed PR Release Form

·        Premier Support

·        MCS and/or Partner Engaged

·        Current Release of Product

 

Qualifying “Technical Criteria”

·        Hosting:  Throughput: WF/WCF > 100 tx/second

·        Integrated Platform: AppFabric, WIF, SharePoint Server or BizTalk integrated solution

·        Management: PowerShell API | SCOM

·        Monitoring:  >100M tracked events (15 events/instance @ 50 calls/sec, 8-hour day, over 5 days)              

·        Persistence:  >50K persisted active instances | >10 persist points/workflow

·        Tier1/Mission Critical:  Cache HA feature and WF/WCF mission critical application

 

 ·         Projects that have case study potential due to the client’s name.

o   Usually for companies that have strong name recommendation or a large in size, but exceptions often occur and smaller companies can still participate, just at a smaller dollar amount.

o   Example: a Fortune 1000 corporation embarking on a new project using Workflow Services or WCF Services hosted on Windows Server AppFabric.

·         Projects that are technically interesting.

o   The project may be developing items which are of interest to the broader Microsoft ISV community, and the work product can be generalized (e.g., removing the client’s IP) for sharing. For example, getting AppFabric to use Oracle for persistence and monitoring.

o   The project may well provide lots of feedback on less used aspects of AppFabric, WF and WCF that can be a source of bug reports to MS and guidance to the ISV community. For example, building a Workflow Services design environment completely external to Visual Studio.

o &n
bsp; The project itself does not have to be large in scope- it may be just a proof of concept effort. In effect, Microsoft will “seed” the development’s success.