Community Blogs : SharePoint 2007

Iterating through all Web Applications in a SharePoint farm

ASP.NET Weblogs — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:26:00 GMT

Iterating through SPSiteCollection and SPWebCollection is a pretty simple, because getting these collections is a simple. SharePoint API doesn’t provide any method to get collection of all Web Applications in a farm. Here we need to write more code, than we are getting collections of SPSite or SPWeb. SPWebService provides collection of SPWebApplication, but it is only a part of all Web Applications, because SPFarm have many SP Web Services. Getting all services in a SP Farm: SPServiceCollection services = SPFarm.Local.Services; Here we should choose only Services which is of type SPWebService iterating through all services in a SPServiceCollection and check which is of type SPWebService if (curService is SPWebService) … Now we can iterate through...(read more)

SharePoint Testing Strategies

ASP.NET Weblogs — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:14:00 GMT

Someone recently asked about test plans and how to test components during development so you can be comfortable they'll perform well when hosted on large farms. The short answer is that you want to create the best simulation you can, and that means creating a test farm as close to production as possible, and testing scenarios with patterns and data as close to production as possible. With mission-critical apps the test environment should be identical with production, but in most cases it won’t be...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Building and Packaging SharePoint Solutions

ASP.NET Weblogs — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:25:00 GMT

In my last post I described a strategy for: Planning SharePoint Solution Packages . In this post we'll construct a sample solution template, use that template to construct a real solution, package this as a WSP, and finally (once you have many WSPs) wrap the entire process with a routine to automate the build. You can download the sample code from the WSPSolution project on CodePlex. Let's get started. The strategy uses Visual Studio 2008 to build the assemblies and WSPBuilder to generate SharePoint...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Toronto SharePoint User Group Wednesday, July 15: Feature Sets and Alerts

ASP.NET Weblogs — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:05:00 GMT

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Eli's SharePoint 2007 Resources

ASP.NET Weblogs — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:28:00 GMT

What's Here Welcome to my list of SharePoint 2007 Resources! This is a hub for SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Resources with two advantages: All resources are hand-picked and vetted for quality, and each topic contains a with hand-tuned search designed to return the latest content which you can then filter further to find what you need. R eference [ Search Results ] Wikipedia: SharePoint . Microsoft: SharePoint Server Home Page . Microsoft: Social Computing Home . KBAlertz . Receive free alerts whenever...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Planning SharePoint Solution Packages (WSPs)

ASP.NET Weblogs — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:02:00 GMT

SharePoint architects and developers often wonder how best to design solution packages for long-term ease of use, especially through upgrade cycles. In a survey of SharePoint developers I found a range of strategies from one monolithic WSP to hold everything, up to practically one per feature which resulted in as many as 50 WSPs for a project. The variance depended on the developer's goals for maintenance. Application vendors want to keep things simple for admins, so a single solution per product...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Toronto SharePoint User Group: May 27 and June 17

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:04:00 GMT

This is a heads-up about two exciting TSPUG sessions coming soon: next week on May 27 and next month on June 17. Next Wednesday Bill Brockbank ( Navantis ) is leading a set of "Quick Hits"- these are 15 minute presentations by members on a variety of topics. Details of these micro-sessions will follow on the recently relaunched (and not entirely complete) TSPUG.com . While we're on the topic, kudos to Bill and his team for relaunching our site! Then in June we're exciting to have Max Yermakhanov...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Preview: The practical limits of people and SharePoint

ASP.NET Weblogs — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:59:00 GMT

I'm in Montreal for SharePoint Summit 2009 , thinking about the session I'm delivering on Tuesday afternoon. The goal is to distill all the useful knowledge that you won't learn anywhere else, or at the very least, not all in one place. And none of it is in existing SharePoint books or articles. At least none that I know of, but I'd love to be surprised. The abstract (Ctrl-End to the bottom of this page ) follows the conventional Problem, Opportunity, Solution, Benefits, Agenda model, but it's probably better to lay the cards out and say "here's what you're going to learn" and the best way to do that is to give you all of my sources here, before the start of the session and long before the final slide cleverly...(read more)

TSPUG Tonight: Workflow, K2 and Twitter

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:33:00 GMT

Attendees of the Wednesday March 25 edition of the Toronto SharePoint User Group will navigate the wonders of Document Life Cycle in SharePoint using K2 BlackPearl . Our own Bill Brockbank will verily demonstrate how K2 can be used to manage the governance, authoring and editing of a document library with nothing up his sleeves except K2's BlackPearl. From there Bill will reveal the magic of multi-level approval before deeming a work as final and published. Magical stuff indeed. Bill Brockbank is a Microsoft SharePoint Server MVP and an experienced Solutions Architect with over 25 years of experience in software and hardware design. With such a wealth of industry knowledge, Bill is adept at envisioning practical solution architectures, problem...(read more)

Reminder TSPUG Tonight: SharePoint Solutions and Automating the Build

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:23:00 GMT

The topic for tonight was suggested during the most recent Toronto SharePoint camp - How to structure SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio, and automate the build and WSP generation. Building SharePoint Solutions (WSP) is the most painful part of the development process. In this session attendees will learn how to take the pain away for SharePoint 2007 by structuring Visual Studio Solutions for easy management, and by automating the build and WSP creation. Presented by me, Eli Robillard with corrections, improvements and miscellaneous heckling by Bill Brockbank and you. See you there! If you can make it tonight, please RSVP (just a formality), so that Susie can determine how much pizza to order. Location: Nexient Learning @ 2 Bloor Street West...(read more)

The Toronto SharePoint Camp Kicked Ass

ASP.NET Weblogs — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:16:00 GMT

A giant shout-out to the organizing committee, volunteers, sponsors and attendees of this year’s Toronto SharePoint Camp , what a great day! Chairman Bill Brockbank was pretty raspy (and full of Buckley’s), so I was the “voice” for the opening, and facilitator of the speaker round-table and raffle, but these things don’t happen without great people and planning. Everyone did a great job to be proud of. We had well over 200 attendees for 20 sessions delivered by 19 speakers including 5 MVPs representing a variety of specialties. Feedback was phenomenal ( here's the first review from the wild ) with a lot of comments like “greatly exceeded expectations” and “I can’t believe you guys can offer this for free.” There were a few benefits we didn...(read more)

Best Free SharePoint Downloads - updated

ASP.NET Weblogs — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:36:00 GMT

http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2008/12/13/the-best-free-sharepoint-downloads.aspx I've added full descriptions to this living post to explain why these are the greatest downloads since O12 itself, it's starting to look like a real resource. Philosophical question - do you love or hate these posts about such changes (posts about posts)? Are they as annoying as blog spam? Do you visit these pages on a regular basis anyway? See you all at Toronto SharePoint Camp tomorrow! Read More......(read more)

Tonight: Toronto SharePoint User Group - We need you!

ASP.NET Weblogs — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Come out and warm up with the Toronto SharePoint User Group tonight at Yonge and Bloor from 6 to 8pm, as we hold a Volunteer Night to prepare for the Toronto SharePoint Camp coming up this Saturday. Whether you're a member eager to give a couple hours back to your community, a new member looking for a bunch of great people to bounce ideas off of, a first-time speaker looking for some tips, a seasoned speaker with stories learned the hard way from conferences past, or just in it for the free pizza, come on out! We know you want to see sessions too, so by coming out and planning the day tonight, we can be sure to accommodate everyone's schedule. Unless your name is Eli or Bill, it won't be an all-day commitment, but we do need your...(read more)

The Best Free SharePoint Downloads

ASP.NET Weblogs — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:26:00 GMT

This post will continue to be maintained to contain the best free utilities and downloads available for WSS and SharePoint 2007. It's starting fairly raw; the plan is that over time descriptions will be written and categories will evolve. Scoping Tools SharePoint Manager SharePoint Analyzer Improvements and extensions to the out-of-box features Starter Kits Faceted Search Scot Hillier's SharePoint Features Gary LaPointe's STSADM extensions Developer Tools Visual Studio project templates : WSP Builder CAML Query Builder Reflector See also : How to build a SharePoint Developer Machine Read More......(read more)

SharePoint for Lunch with Joel Oleson: Thanks Everyone!

ASP.NET Weblogs — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:53:00 GMT

I just got back from the Toronto SharePoint User Group's year-end holiday party and it was a pretty excellent experience. First to thank our meeting sponsors: Quest Software and Nonlinear Creations for picking up the lunch tab, that was an unexpected but much appreciated holiday surprise. And thanks again to Quest for bringing Joel to town! After a few logistical hurdles at the restaurant, Joel presented a thought-provoking and insightful talk on SharePoint governance, and eventually we let him eat too. There were no less than 5 MVPs in attendance - myself, Reza Alirezaei, and Bill Brockback representing SharePoint, and Rob Windsor and Ed Musters representing VB and C# respectively. There were also a number of local luminaries and past user...(read more)