Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Renaud Comte posts:

GuiSmigrate.exe
This is a little graphical interface for the sMigrate.exe tools.It will help you in the process of back up/ restore , Package / deploy and STS migration more easily.This little tools allow you to process any operation with the sMigrate woth not a command line to write. There is some options too : you can export

• a .bat file
• a log file

You just have to modify the .config file with the Url of your Smigrate.exe. Download here

Nice work!

UPDATE: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/11/88118.aspx

Since releasing my previous “essential” webparts (Navigation, MyAlerts & Breadcrumbs) I'm really into extending SharePoint. I've always wanted to create a webpart that would display the contents of an RSS feed and this weekend I finally found some time! So here it is: the Leadit RSSReader webpart. I know Tim Heuer has already created such a webpart, but as a developer it's always cooler to be able to use your own bits.

I've tried to make this webpart as flexible as possible, you can change following properties:

• Feed URL: of course :-)
• Number of posts to show
• Cache duration
• Show post contents
• Post title in bold (useful when showing the post contents)
• Show post date
• Post icon URL (if no URL is set, no icon will be displayed)
• Show feed title
• Show copyright (if one is available in the feed it's shown below the posts, if the feed has a link to an image, that image is shown too)

The easiest way to use this webpart is to put the Leadit.SharePoint.RSSReader.dll in the GAC (it needs some privileges to read the feed) and the DWP file in the \wpcatalog directory. To mark the assemnbly as safe put the following line in the SafeControls section of the Web.Config: <SafeControl Assembly="Leadit.SharePoint.RSSReader, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=86680f0f768d39e0" Namespace="Leadit.SharePoint" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />.

Downloads:

• Leadit.SharePoint.RSSReader_1_0_0_0.zip
• Leadit.SharePoint.RSSReader_1_0_0_0_Src.zip

As always: please test this webpart first before you use it in a production site, I'm not responsible for bad things that could happen... :-) Btw, for all the Belgian people intrested in customizing SharePoint: keep the 3th of March free in your agenda (evening), I'll post more details as soon as they become available.

Patrick was right: InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP-1) Preview can now be downloaded.

Normally I don't re-post messages especially if another Belgian blogger has posted it already. But his time I've got to make an exception: Patrick has a scoop: there is an update coming for InfoPath!

On February 23rd, Microsoft Corp. will unveil a special preview of updates that will be added to Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, as part of the Office Service pack scheduled for relase in June. Some of the most important enhancements are :

• Increased support for digital signatures 
• Enhanced document recovery 
• Additional handwriting support for tablet users 
• Multiple enhancements to the programming environment (Visual Studio .NET toolkit) YES!
• Technical updates: Thanks to the error-reporting customer-feedback technology, some fixes are included

Keep an eye on Patrick's blog to stay up-to-date.

Update: updated list here.

Probably this trick is known already by most of the BizTalk users, but I had to search some time to figure it out (blush). Probably every demo of BizTalk 2004 you'll see uses a Send File Port that sends messages to a directory and most of the time these files will have a GUID as a filename, so each message sent will have a different name. No big deal you'd think, but I was actually looking for how to give these files such a name! The solution is to use “macros” in the URI property of the Sender Port, kinda strange name I think but it works. :-) So the URI property could look like “c:\temp\out\%MessageID%.xml“. Everything between the percentage signs (including themselves) will be replaced by the GUID which is of course unique.

From the docs: The files in which the files send handler writes messages can be created dynamically using a predefined set of macros. Before creating a file on file system, the files send handler substitutes all the macros in file name with their individual values. Several different macros can be used in one file name. The file name macros can be used while configuring the file send handler in BizTalk Explorer, or using the Explorer object model.

• %MessageID%
  Unique identifier of the message in BizTalk Server (GUID). The value is taken directly from message context property BTS.MessageID
• %datetime_bts2000%
  UTC date time in format YYYYMMDDhhmmsss, where sss means seconds and milliseconds (e.g. 199707121035234 means 1997/07/12, 10:35:23 and 400 milliseconds)
• %datetime%
  UTC date time in format YYYY-MM-DDThhmmss (e.g. 1997-07-12T103508)
• %datetime.tz%
  Local date time + time zone from GMT in format YYYY-MM-DDThhmmssTZD, (e.g. 1997-07-12T103508+800)
• %time%
  UTC time in format hhmmss
• %time.tz%
  Local time + time zone from GMT in format hhmmssTZD (e.g. 124525+530)

Update (thanks to Mike's comments): %SourceFileName% (it's case sensitive): name of the file that was received by the receive port.

Normally I don't react if some political party evangilises a stupid idea, but this time they've made me angry. It started with the following article on ZDNet.be: Sp.a heeft kritiek op Microsoft-aankoop door dienst Financiën. It turns out the Belgian government will buy 8.000 pc's equipped with Microsoft software. No big deal, but there is a political party that doesn't like this. No problem, everybody has the right to have an opinion (even if I don't like it). But the SP-A (= the political party) uses some arguments in their statement that are completely wrong (I only mention two of them):

• easier software development
  Who says developing for Linux is easier? Come on!
• more opportunities for Belgian ISV's
  What's the difference: you buy Microsoft products or you buy open source products, they both need to be implemented. Right?

On the site of another Belgian party (partner of SP-A), Spirit, you can view the famous video of Bill Gates and “the pie“ while visiting Belgium. Spirt why are you doing this? I think political parties can not promote such behavior! There is also a petition against Microsoft, check out the name of the html page: microsuck.htm. Who created this, some teenagers or some serious adults: I really don't know.

I'm really pissed off, this calls for action. I don't know how, but I do know that I will react. Maybe a petition in favor of the “freedom to innovate”, maybe an open letter, ... ? If you have any ideas drop me a line...

It seems that I'm not the only one thinking about scenarios where you have to upgrade Web Parts that are in use. Ian Morrish points in Tariq's post to a MSDN article that covers this topic:

Upgrading a Web Part Assembly for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
Summary: Upgrade a Web Part assembly for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services or Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, including adding, deleting, renaming, repurposing, or upgrading properties for a Web Part.

By the way, Ian has a great site with a lot of information about SharePoint: WSS Faq. Another great site this time by Stephen Cummins: SPS Faq.

Update: there's another update for these web parts: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/04/84011.aspx

Yesterday I've posted my solution to add some essential functionality (in my opinion) to SharePoint. My solution provides three webparts:

• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.Navigation
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.MyAlerts
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.Breadcrumbs

If you want to see some screenshots or if you'd like to have more information, see my previous post. But there seems to be a little problem with the Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.MyAlert webpart that I released yesterday. So I've fixed this bug, the new source files and binaries can be downloaded from following locations:

• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.1
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.1 Src
• See: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/04/84011.aspx

Of course the version number has changed, so you've got to add following node to the SafeControls section of the Web.Config. 
<SafeControl Assembly="Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials, Version=1.0.0.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=86680f0f768d39e0" Namespace="Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
Additionally I've changed the Title of the webparts to distinguish them from other webparts (Navigation is a rather common name), so make sure you also use the new dwp files (you need to do this anyway because the version number is in the dwp files too).

Due to this bug only administrators could use the MyAlerts webpart, users without administrator privileges were asked for a username/password. Check out the source code if you're intrested in how I solved this. Also if you have comments, requests, ... regarding this webparts, please let me know!

Due to the fact that I needed to update the assembly that contained the webparts, I started thinking about update scenarios. Because the version number changed, I had to remove the previous version of the webpart from the sites that used them and then I added the new versions the these sites. This could be a problem if the webpart is used in a large number of sites... something think about a little bit more.

Update2: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/11/88118.aspx
Update: I've added a What's New web part to this library, for more details: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/04/84011.aspx

In some of my previous posts I've complained a little bit about the rather limited SharePoint functionality. But I'm lucky: SharePoint is extremely extensible and (last but not least) I'm a developer! (don't know which of the two is the best) So I've created following webparts:

• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.Navigation
  Navigation in SharePoint isn't great, you can view subsites and stuff like that by using the Site Settings page but this isn't a great “user experience“ (nice buzz-word isn't it?). So now there is the Navigation webpart which displays the structure of a SharePoint portal in a tree structure (only the sites to which the user has access are showed).
  
  
  There are two properties for this webpart which you can use to tweak the contents. The Levels property determines how many levels in the tree structure should be showed. If you select the Start from Root property, the tree structure starting from the root site is displayed, even if you place this webpart on a subsite.
  
  
  
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.MyAlerts
  Just like the Navigation webpart, the MyAlerts gives you a shortcut to the alerts of the site the webpart is placed on, for the current user of course.
  
  Additionally this webpart enables you to quickly add an alert for each list on the site.
  
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials.BreadCrumbs
  The last one is pretty simple, as the name says: it displays breadcrumbs:
  
  Again there are two properties to alter the contents of this webpart. The Levels property sets the number of links to display. The Separator property enables you to change the characters displayed between the links. Since I like slashes the default is space + slash + space.
  
  
  

These three webparts are in the Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials assembly. To deploy them, just put this assembly in the GAC (for example), put the DWP files in the wpcatalog directory of your SharePoint site and add the following node to the SafeControls section of the web.config:
<SafeControl Assembly="Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1a431c1526626774" Namespace="Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials" TypeName="*" Safe="True" />
I've deployed these webparts to some site without any problems, but please test them before you use them in a production envirionment! :-) If you don't like them, feel free to alter the source code, I'd appriciate if you'd let me know what you changed. The source code or the binaries can be downloaded using following links:

• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.0.zip
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.0 Src.zip

Updated versions (more info):

• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.1
• Leadit.SharePoint.Essentials 1.0.0.1 Src

Again updated: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2004/03/04/84011.aspx

I'd like to introduce to you two rather young people who started a .NET related blog lately. The first one is Tom van de Kerkhof, he's not only a new co-worker of me, but he's also my nephew (so if you're looking for a couple of compromising photos of him, just drop me a line). The last few months Tom's focus was Office integration, he gave a nice presentation about Visual Studio Tools for Office at our company headquarters. I think Tom is also starting his own Pizza restaurant: this afternoon I've seen the first demo of the website using the Speech Application SDK! I hope he's going to blog about his experiences with this stuff.

The second one I only met today: David Cumps. He's a student in his second year, check out his blog for his complete story. I'm looking forward to see some intresting posts!

They will both attend the Developer & IT Pro Days 2004 and since they are both quite young I'm expecting a lot of these guys during the Geek Fest! :-) Let's party...