Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

In WSS 3.0, lists are no longer part of the site definitions and encapsulated in Features. This not only allows you to deal with a lighter ONET.XML, it gives you the ability to define a list template once and reference it multiple times across different site definitions (reusability is making a lot more sense in this version – I love it )

My colleague, Joubin, explains how easy it would be to point to a OOTB list template in your site definitions using the Feature framework and have them referenced in your default.aspx page of any provisioned sites off your site definition. http://www.sharepointblogs.com/joubin/archive/2007/01/16/17921.aspx

Even if you want to add your own custom list definition (such as Hardware assets) to the site def, you should follow the same instructions in his post. Package the list definition into a feature, Install and activate the feature on the server and get your site def just reference it.

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Tired of seeing custom/friendly exception descriptions (such as “An unexpeted error has occured”) in your sharepoint sites specially when you are developing master pages or web parts? why not trying this:

1) Locate the web.config of your site.

2) Find <SafeMode> element and enable the CallStack attribute by changing CallStack=”false” to CallStack=”true”. This ensures that the call stack and an exception message is shown when a system-level exception occurs. You can optionally change AllowPageLevelTrace=”false” to AllowPageLevelTrace=”true” for more monitoring features.

Warning: Setting the CallStack attribute to true enables this functionality for all local and *remote* clients. At this point there is no way to differentiate between these two scopes, so think twice about the information disclosure while setting this attribute.

3) Find <customErrors> and change it to  <customErrors mode=”Off” />or

Warning: Setting the mode attribute to “On” enables this functionality for all local and *remote* clients.”RemoteOnly” Specifies that custom errors are shown  only to the remote clients, and that ASP.NET generic errors to the local clients.RemoteOnly mode is usually combined with defaultRedirect attribute in 
production enviroment to redirect the user to a custom generic error page such as defaultRedirect=”GenericError.htm”.

<customErrors defaultRedirect=”GenericError.htm” mode=”RemoteOnly”>
 <error statusCode=”500″ redirect=”InternalError.htm”/>
</customErrors>

4) Find compilation element and change it to <compilation batch=”false” debug=”true”> to have the .Net framework produce debug binaries rather than release (retail) binaries. Make sure you turn this off when you go live in production.

5)IISRESET or “%systemroot%sytem32IISAPP.vbs /a AppPoolNameUnderwhichSiteIsRunning  /r”

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1) PowerPoint Deck: http://blogs.devhorizon.com/downloads/TSUG01102007.zip

2) STSADM custom command to reverse engineer Site Columns and Content Types for creating elements file for a WSS v3 Feature : http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/articles/MossStsadmWcmCommands.aspx

3) VS 2005 Template for features: http://blogs.devhorizon.com/downloads/WSSv3%20Feature.zip

Copy  the zip file to ……My DocumentsVisual Studio 2005TemplatesProjectTemplatesVisual C# and you are good to go. Just fire up the VS 2005 and you will see the template underneath the My Templates. As I said in the demo, there are some bugs in this template ,but still a good tool for heavy duty features deployment or when it is combined with STSADM custom command. I could not find the direct link the in Daniel’s site , and that’s why I put the tool directly in my space  – Definitely not a good tool for Demo:)

4) Plan Content Types for MOSS 2007:  http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/63bb092a-00fe-45ff-a4b8-d8be998d1a3c1033.mspx?mfr=true

5) Plan Content Types for WSS 3.0:  http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/267ab7e5-35f6-46c9-ba64-2c63d6a0dbc01033.mspx?mfr=true

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These days, you need to do more than just to store data. Content types along with site columns are the means by which metadata can be shared across lists, libraries, sites, and site collections. In this presentation I am going to show you why they are the important pieces of the ECM functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007 using a live project (not just a hello world demo!!).

If you are available to attend, you can join us by RSVP for this meeting by sending an e-mail to register@tspug.com with the subject line “[TSPUG Registration] 2007-01 Meeting” and be sure to include your full name in the message body. For more information please visit Toronto SharePoint User Group web site at: http://www.tspug.com/

I will be posting the demo materials either here or at my web site at http://www.devhorizon.com. Stay Tuned!

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Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005 encompasses two components (very similar to what Reporting Services offers )

Server : Allows you to manage scorecards. It is comprised of an ASP.NET web service, a metadata database, and a series of Web parts that can be used in sharePoint sites. ASP.NET Web service provides interactions with other applications such as Biztalk , SharePoint and etc.

Microsoft Business Scorecard Builder : A windows Form application which provides a way to quickly prototype, create scorecards and publish them via the server component  to SQL Server Reporting Services or Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies , so Builder is nothing except an authoring tool.

As for the integration of BSM with SharePoint products here is a summary of both versions :

1)SPS2003 (SharePoint Portal 2003): All functionalities of BSM is available , because it gives you the authoring tool to create scorecards and/or KPIS and it also gives you the server component to publish them to SharePoint. In addition to all these , it also provides some web parts that user can get an instant graphical representation of the KPI behavior.

2)MOSS 2007: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be a supported platform for BSM 2005 for sure, but the existing product can NOT be installed on MOSS 2007 so we cannot give a proper answer until service pack 1 (ten weeks after MOSS 2007 is publicly available) is released. The Service Pack will include a roll-up of released Quick Fix Engineering (QFE) updates and a number of fixes that are specific to MOSS 2007 integration. To acquire BSM 2005 Service Pack 1 customers will require a BSM 2005 license. It is not necessary for current BSM 2005 customers running on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 to apply Service Pack 1.  Service Pack 1 is required only when customer deploy BSM 2005 on MOSS 2007.  It will be released through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

I tried installing BSM2005 onto the RTM and BSM Server will NOT install.   Seems some API’s and database structure changes in SharePoint make BSM Server install fail. Here is it what it gives me:

 Web Parts

Passed                        Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

Passed                        Microsoft ASP.NET 1.1

Passed                        Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0

Passed                        Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 or Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Failed                          Microsoft SharePoint Extended Site

 

Web Service

Passed                        Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

Failed                         Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 4.0

Passed                       Microsoft OLE DB Provider for OLAP Services (MSOLAP) 2000 SP4 (8.00.2039)

Failed                         Microsoft ADOMD.NET 8.0 

Passed                        Microsoft ASP.NET 1.1

Passed                        Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0

As you can see it is only looking for an older version of WSS and SPS for the web parts. For the web service it is complaining about   ADOMD.NET 8.0  which I think is required to hook up the scoreboards to cubes for multi-dimensional processing.

Here is a fact sheet that gives you so ideas about this product:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/office/BusinessScorecardManager_2FS.mspx

This one talks about increased BI investment (including scorecard) in office 12 platform by Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-23BiLaunchPR.mspx

Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 Documentation can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D2F8C636-602D-4744-BA7D-D3821F8920D5&displaylang=en#filelist

And the trial version is here ( in two different components mentioned above)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=96F12385-AD47-494B-9DA4-60BBCD0D1B57&displaylang=en

Software and hardware requirements and a step by step how to articles are all explained here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101056881033.aspx

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