Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.

If you didn’t get a chance to see me presenting this topic across Canada , I will be presenting it again as a webcast at Microsoft Virtual Techdays Developers 2009. This virtual event is a 24-hour day of online technology learning with 95 LIVE sessions delivered via Live Meeting.

here are the details –>

Language  : English.
Products   : Office SharePoint Server 2007,SQL Server Reporting Services 2008
Duration   : 60 Minutes
Start Date : Wednsday April 01, 2009 2:30PM-3:30PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Start Date : Wednsday April 01, 2009 7:30PM-8:30PM UTC/GMT Time (Greenwich Mean Time)

Essentially we will be talking about the topics that I have already documented on my blog.

If you wish to attend virtually, the registration URL is at –

http://www.msfttechdays.com/Modules/Registration/Submit.aspx

Make sure once you register , you also look at the sessions and chose the ones you’re planning to attend:

http://www.msfttechdays.com/public/sessionlist.aspx
Also as a FYI, keep a look out for the next issue of the TechNet Magazine. There will be an article on this topic written by yours truly 🙂

Update for Attendees – March/24/2009

Here’s what attendees get for attending:

Get a second chance to pass your Microsoft Certification exam In the real world, you might need more than one chance at certification. With Second Shot, if you do not pass any IT professional, developer, or project manager certification exam on your first try, you can retake the exam without an additional cost. Along with enjoying the benefits of Second Shot, you can access a collection of Microsoft E-Learning courses, which provide 8 to 20 hours of on-line instructional content to help you master a product and prepare for a certification. Normally priced up to US$350, these e-learning collections are just US$35 when you register for Second Shot. Limit one per customer.  Register Now!

50% off Microsoft Certification exam – exclusive offer for TechDays attendees! As a special benefit for attending the sessions live on April 1st, all TechDay attendees will be given a special URL and discount code to register for a Microsoft certification. You must take your exam by May 31, 2009. This offer is available worldwide and is not combinable with any other offers.

MSDN Premium Subscriptions  Attendees who complete one or more session evaluations during the day of the event will be entered to win one of several MSDN Premium Subscriptions that includes Visual Studio Professional edition, Expression Web and Blend, Operating Systems, SQL Server, Servers, Office, Dynamics, MSDN Library, Managed Newsgroups, Online Concierge, 4 technical support incidents, and more.

 Next month, on Saturday, April 25, the fourth annual Toronto Code Camp will be held in downtown Toronto. I’ve had the privilege to present at this event again.

Like any other Code Camps , there is absolutely no fluff or marketing stuff in Toronto’s biggest code camp whatsoever. Find out more about the agenda and speakers at http://www.torontocodecamp.net. BTW, Toronto Code Camp now has a Facebook group setup at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=55545432454. RSVP please if you are planning to attend.

I’ll be presenting the following session:

Turning Chaos into Order: Best Practices for Developing SharePoint Applications

Truthfully there is much more to development with the SharePoint platform than the raw aspects of the technology. While I have been building enterprise-level applications on the top of this great platform for years, I have discovered that there are some common challenges that SharePoint architects and developers often face when building such applications.

 In this session we will explore some of the toughest architectural decisions you may face during the development life cycle of a SharePoint project, how to deal with common real-life hurdles and how to utilize existing best practices, patterns and practices, tools and ideas to ensure that your SharePoint applications successfully transition from development to release.

Update 4/26/2009: Session Follow-up is available here.

So here is the deal:

You add a user to the users collection of a site collection by calling into the SPUserCollection.Add method passing login name, email, name and notes as parameters, but notes field doesn’t get populated as you expected:

[CSharp]
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
{
using (SPWeb sweb = site.OpenWeb())
{
//Ommitted Code for brevity
sweb.SiteUsers.Add(“foo\\JohnDoe”, “JohnDoe@foo.com”, “John Doe”, “Is it John Doe or John Dough?”);
//Ommitted Code for brevity
}
}
[/CSharp]

Although, using the code snippet above, the user is added correctly to the user collection of the site but notes field is always left blank. Note that in the above code, I am just adding the user to the users collection and I don’t bother adding him to any specific group at this point (for example by calling into SPWeb.Groups[groupName].AddUser). Let’s suppose that my requirement only dictates to add the user to this collection at this point and that’s all for now.

kept at each site collection level, there is this hidden list called ‘User Information List’ that stores some metadata about every and each user has ever browsed, authenticated or added to a group in that site collection . This design decision along with many other things kept at the site collection level gives countless developers a good amount of grief and frustration as you may be aware of . When a user is granted access to a site, a new list item will be created in that list. The User Information List can be accessed via the browser by navigating to /_catalogs/users/simple.aspx from your site or via Object model , only if you or your code runs under sufficient privileges. So, we can use that list for troubleshooting above issue by updating the ‘Notes’ field after the user is added. The following example shows how to interact with this list for setting the required user properties.

[CSharp]
using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
{
using (SPWeb sweb = site.OpenWeb())
{
//Ommitted Code for brevity
sweb.SiteUsers.Add(“foo\\JohnDoe”, “JohnDoe@foo.com”, “John Doe”,string.Empty);
user = sweb.AllUsers[“foo\\JohnDoe”];
SPList list = sweb.Lists[“User Information List”];
SPListItem userItem = list.Items.GetItemById(user.ID);
userItem[“Notes”] = “Is it John Doe or John Dough?”;
userItem.Update();
//Ommitted Code for brevity
}
}
[/CSharp]

This way you pass an empty string to the calling method (SiteUsers.Add) and update the Notes field in a separate call.

I was humbled when Stephen Ibaraki asked me if we could have a chat over the phone about myself,  collaboration and SharePoint. It really was a fun experience and I enjoyed talking to him and sharing some pointers. To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link.

More about this interview on Canadian IT Manager’s blog.

Most Viewed Posts by the Most Valuable Professionals in 2008.

In parallel to the YouShapeIT engagement , I ran a small survey among my fellow MVPs, simply asking for their most viewed blog post in 2008. Initially I wanted to host this linkfest as part of a separate bulletin somewhere in this month’s YouShapeIT issue (i.e. in community section) , but due to some issues, this was not possible.

Here is the linkfest to the most viewed post by the most valuable professionals in SharePoint Space (In no special order):

1. Eli Ribbolard
2. Paul Stork
3. Spence Harbar
4. Darrin Bishop 
5. Robert L. Bogue
6. Ágnes Molnár
7. Sezai komur
8. Tobias Zimmergren
9. Gary Lapointe 
10. Ishai Sagi
11. Andrew Woodward
12. Jake Dan Attis
13. Paul Galvin
14. Chris O’Brien
15. Nikander & Margriet Bruggeman
16. Reza Alirezaei

Honestly, I don’t think I have time to update this page , but I will turn on the comments in case any SharePoint MVP or non-MVP wants to leave their most viewed post here as well. I think this is a good list for those who are interested to simply read the best !

Cheers,